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PhD Thesis - Energy Systems Research Unit - University of Strathclyde

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5.8 Regenerative Fuel Cell Model<br />

A regenerative fuel cell is a fuel cell that may be run either as a fuel cell, or in<br />

reverse as an electrolyser. It is, essentially, a storage device, which takes in<br />

excess electricity and converts it to hydrogen, which it then stores in a tank until<br />

electricity is required, when the operation will reverse to create electricity from<br />

the stored hydrogen. A model for this can be created by amalgamating the fuel<br />

cell and electrolyser models, although extra consideration must be given to the<br />

amount <strong>of</strong> hydrogen storage that is available, and the initial storage level.<br />

At the beginning <strong>of</strong> the procedure, the amount <strong>of</strong> hydrogen in the tank is<br />

calculated using the initial percentage storage level, and the maximum storage<br />

level. Then, at each timestep, it is determined whether there is a demand for or a<br />

supply <strong>of</strong> electricity. If there is a demand, the fuel cell model is employed as<br />

described in Section 5.6, using hydrogen from the dedicated storage rather than<br />

that available from the matching stage. The procedure checks to see if there is<br />

enough hydrogen available in the storage tank the same way as before, and the<br />

amount used is subtracted from the amount in the tank to give a new tank<br />

storage level. If there is a supply <strong>of</strong> electricity, the electrolyser model is used to<br />

determine the amount <strong>of</strong> hydrogen that may be produced, as described in<br />

Section 5.7, and this is added to the stored amount, taking care not to exceed the<br />

storage limitations. If the amount <strong>of</strong> hydrogen being produced will take the<br />

storage level over 100%, only the amount <strong>of</strong> hydrogen necessary to fill the tank<br />

will be produced, and the amount <strong>of</strong> electricity required to achieve this is<br />

calculated. If this would require the electrolyser to run below minimum load, no<br />

hydrogen is produced.<br />

The output from this model is a graph <strong>of</strong> the percentage storage tank content,<br />

along with the amount <strong>of</strong> electricity produced, electricity used, heat produced,<br />

and water used. A regenerative fuel cell may be defined using the Fuel cell<br />

definition window, and an example <strong>of</strong> this can be seen in Appendix 1, Figure<br />

A1.39.<br />

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