Trade-off designs of power-to-methane systems via solid-oxide electrolyzer and the application to biogas upgrading

Solid-oxide electrolyzer based power-to-methane is promising for large-scale energy storage as well as biogas upgrading by efficiently converting intermittent renewable power and CO2 (e.g., in biogas) into synthetic methane. Either air or pure oxygen can be employed in solid oxide electrolyzers for anode sweeping and thermal management. This work investigates the optimal conceptual design of a variety of power-to-methane layouts to (i) identify the effect of sweep-gas type on system performance and (ii) compare different concepts for biogas upgrading. Bi-objective optimization is performed to understand the trade-off between system efficiency and methane production with the effects of the key design variables. The results indicate that oxygen sweep only marginally affected the system performance (6% reduction in methane production at the same system efficiency). The methanation inside the electrolyzer helped achieve a higher system efficiency (over 90%) by maintaining the electrolyzer temperature as high as possible. Unlike most biogas-upgrading systems, which behaved similarly to the standalone power-to-methane system, with an efficiency range of 70–86%, the direct-biogas-electrolysis performed within a wide efficiency range (52–88%) and a reduced methane yield (50% less than the other systems operating at 70% efficiency). The detrimental methane reforming inside the electrolyzer was limited by increasing the reactant conversion and the electrolysis pressure. The various solid-oxide electrolyzer based power-to-methane concepts showed promising results for biogas upgrading applications. The practical choice of biogas-upgrading concepts will depend on the requirement of operational flexibility to handle variable renewable power considering different gas storage and carbon capture technologies.

Optimal design of solid-oxide electrolyzer based power-to-methane systems: A comprehensive comparison between steam electrolysis and co-electrolysis

Stefan Diethelm, Hossein Madi, François Maréchal, Maria del Mar Perez Fortes, Jan Van Herle, Ligang Wang

Power-to-methane technologies have been regarded as a promising alternative to offer small or large-scale, long-timescale (daily/weekly/seasonal) energy storage as well as the opportunity of utilizing CO2. The performance of the core component, the electrolyzer, largely determines how well a power-to-methane system can perform, making high-temperature solid-oxide electrolysis attractive because of its inherent high electrical ef- ficiency. More importantly, solid oxide electrolysis uniquely allows co-electrolysis of steam and CO2 for producing syngas, the composition of which can be readily, flexibly adjusted to synthesize different hydrocarbon fuels. In this paper, for both steam and co-electrolysis, we comprehensively and comparatively investigate several critical design issues of a solid oxide electrolyzer based power-to-methane system with fixed bed methanation reactor and membrane-based methane upgrading: (1) system level heat integration, (2) the impacts of operating variables (e.g., operating voltage, reactant utilization, anode/cathode feed ratio, and operating pressure of the methanation reactor and membrane) on system performances, (3) the competitiveness of the electrolyzer operation with pure oxygen production, and (4) the possibility of avoiding electrical heating, which is necessary for thermoneutral operation to heat up the electrolyzer feeds to the required temperature. To achieve this target, a multi-objective optimization platform with integrated heat cascade calculation is employed with experimentally calibrated component models. The results show that, for both steam and co-electrolysis, there is a trade-off between system efficiency and methane yield: pursuing a higher efficiency generally reduces the methane yield, which is a consequence of electrochemistry, stack cooling and system-level heat integration. Instead of sweep air, pure oxygen production is preferred only at small current density, which delivers the highest system efficiency but the lowest methane yield. When the electrolyzer operates exothermically, methane production and the total power consumption can vary in much wider ranges than those with the electrolyzer operating under thermoneutral mode, which leads to potential enhancement of operation flexibility and reliability. The co-electrolysis coupling with strongly-exothermic syngas methanation, in general, offers better heat- integration opportunity with sweep air, but less with pure oxygen production. In addition, several design heuristics, e.g., the operating pressure of the electrolyzer and methanation reactor, are concluded to potentially guide practical applications.

2018

Power-to-fuels via solid-oxide electrolyzer: Operating window and techno-economics

Stefan Diethelm, Tzu-En Lin, François Maréchal, Jan Van Herle, Ligang Wang

Power-to-fuel systems via solid-oxide electrolysis are promising for storing excess renewable electricity by efficient electrolysis of steam (or co-electrolysis of steam and CO2) into hydrogen (or syngas), which can be further converted into synthetic fuels with plant-wise thermal integration. Electrolysis stack performance and durability determine the system design, performance, and long-term operating strategy; thus, solid-oxide electrolyzer based power-to-fuels were investigated from the stack to system levels. At the stack level, the data from a 6000-h stack testing under laboratory isothermal conditions were used to calibrate a quasi-2D model, which enables to predict practical, isothermal stack performance with reasonable accuracy. Feasible stack operating windows meeting various design specifications (e.g., specific syngas composition) were further generated to support the selection of operating points. At the system level, with the chosen similar stack operating points, various power-to-fuel systems, including power-to-hydrogen, power-to-methane, power-to-methanol (dimethyl ether) and power-to-gasoline, were compared techno-economically considering system-level heat integration. Several operating strategies of the stack were compared to address the increase in stack temperature due to degradation. The modeling results show that the system efficiency for producing H2, methane, methanol/dimethyl ether and gasoline decreases sequentially from 94% (power-to-H2) to 64% (power-to-gasoline), based on a higher heating value. Co-electrolysis, which allows better heat integration, can improve the efficiency of the systems with less exothermic fuel-synthesis processes (e.g., methanol/dimethyl ether) but offers limited advantages for power-to-methane and power-to-gasoline systems. In a likely future scenario, where the growing amount of electricity from renewable sources results in increasing periods of a negative electricity price, solid oxide electrolyser based power-to-fuel sys

2019

Techno-economic optimization of biomass-to-methanol with solid-oxide electrolyzer

François Maréchal, Maria del Mar Perez Fortes, Jan Van Herle, Ligang Wang, Hanfei Zhang

The purpose of this paper is to assess techno-economically the integration of solid-oxide electrolysis in biomass-to-methanol processes: (1) The hydrogen produced by electrolysis can be used to adjust the composition of syngas from gasification to increase the conversion of carbon in biomass, (2) the oxygen as a byproduct of electrolysis can be used in the gasifier to avoid expensive air separation units, and (3) the overall process can be thermally integrated. Two integration concepts are proposed with different sizing methods of the electrolyzer: (1) the case of full conversion of carbon in biomass, in which a large electrolyzer is driven by the electricity purchased from the grid, and (2) the case of zero power exchange, in which only part of the carbon in biomass is converted reaching self-sufficiency of electricity. The three cases including the state-of-the-art biomass-to-methanol process are investigated to identify (1) possible trade-offs between efficiency and costs, and (2) under which conditions, these concepts become economically viable. With a reference methanol production of 100 kton/year, the results show that there is an optimal design for the state-of-the-art case, which offers an efficiency of 53.3% due to steam cycles and a payback time of 4.8 years. For the integrated concepts, there are sharp trade-offs between the system efficiency and methanol production cost rate. The case of full carbon conversion can reach an energy efficiency of 64.5-66.0% but results in a longer payback time of over 11 years. The case of zero-power exchange can achieve a similar efficiency as the state-of-the-art case with a slightly increased payback time of over 5.5 years. The payback time of the full carbon conversion case can be shorter than 5 years with a reduction in stack cost and electricity price, and an increase in stack lifetime.

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