Design and evaluation of a novel plan for thermochemical cycles and PEM fuel cells to produce hydrogen and power: Application of environmental perspective.

In the present article, a green and efficient multi-generation system equipped with proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells as the main mover is presented and thoroughly examined. The proposed novel approach dramatically reduces the amount of carbon dioxide produced by using biomass as the primary energy source for PEM fuel cells. The waste heat recovery method is offered as a passive energy enhancement strategy for efficient and cost-effective output production. It uses the extra heat generated by the PEM fuel cells to produce cooling through the chillers. In addition, the thermochemical cycle is included to recover the waste heat from syngas exhaust gases and produce hydrogen, which will significantly help the process of going green transition. The suggested system's effectiveness, affordability, and environmental friendliness are assessed via a developed engineering equation solver program code. Additionally, the parametric analysis assesses the impact of major operational factors on the model's performance from thermodynamic, exergo-economic, and exergo-environmental indicators. According to the results, the suggested efficient integration achieves an acceptable total cost rate and environmental impact while obtaining high energy and exergy efficiencies. The results further reveal that the biomass moisture content is significant since it highly impacts the system's indicators from various aspects. From the conflictive changes between the exergy efficiency and exergo-environmental metrics, it can be concluded that choosing a proper design condition satisfying more than one aspect is highly important. According to the Sankey diagram, the worst equipment from the energy conversion quality is gasifier and fuel cells, with the highest irreversibility rate of 8 kW and 6.3 kW, respectively.