A review on performance, economic, and environmental analyses of integrated solid oxide fuel cell and biomass gasification systems

Integration of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and biomass gasification system is a promising way to obtain electricity and thermal energy with high thermal efficiency and low environmental impact from biomass. These technologies can be integrated with various ways to obtain useful products, such as electricity and thermal energy for heating and cooling. Many researchers have proposed configurations that include other technologies, such as organic Rankine cycle, gas turbine, and electrolysis, to these systems to further enhance their performance. This review study summarizes different proposed and demonstrated system layouts including SOFC, biomass gasifiers, and other technologies, and discusses modeling and optimization techniques for the main components as well as the integrated system. In addition, the methods used for the performance, cost, and environmental impact analyses of these systems are discussed and compared. These comparisons show that among the different configurations of SOFC and biomass gasifier-based integrated systems, the system consisting of a biomass gasifier, a SOFC, and a micro-scale gas turbine was found to be highly efficient (energy efficiency of 88%). Among the studies reviewed, the levelized unit electricity cost for the integrated system consisting of a biomass gasifier, a SOFC, a gas turbine, and an organic Rankine cycle was found to be lower than other systems with the value of 0.086 $/kWh. In addition, the integrated system consisting of a biomass gasifier, a SOFC, a gas turbine, a steam turbine, an absorption chiller, and an ORC yielded a lower specific CO2 emission (141.2 kg/MWh). It is also shown that exergo-economic analysis and life cycle assessment give the most comprehensive results in terms of economic and environmental analyses, respectively. Important achievements in this field are also summarized and recommendations and suggestions for future work are given.