BLAZE aims at developing Low cost, Advanced and Zero Emission first-of-a-kind small-to-medium Biomass CHP. This aim is reached by developing dual bubbling fluidised bed technology integrated with high temperature gas cleaning & conditioning systems and Solid Oxide Fuel Cells. The technology is characterised by the widest solid fuel spectrum applicable, high efficiencies (50% electrical versus the actual 20%), low investment (<4 k€/kWe) and operational (≈ 0.05 €/kWh) costs, as well as almost zero noxious gaseous and PM emissions, projecting electricity production costs below 0.10 €/kWh. This paper shows the midterm project achievements, i.e. the biomass waste gasification and SOFC tests, the overall simulation and the progress on the realisation of 25 kWe SOFC pilot plant.@en

High temperature biosyngas cleaning is more efficient when the end user operates at elevated temperature, as in biomass gasifier solid oxide fuel cell systems. However, there is not much experience with this technology and low temperature gas cleaning is usually adopted. This paper advances current knowledge by presenting the results from the investigation of side reactions catalysed by commercially available sorbents involving biosyngas main components, and the results obtained with the pilot plant developed within the Horizon2020 project “Flexifuel-SOFC”. K₂CO₃, used for HCl removal, appeared catalytically active towards the water gas shift reaction. Under conditions representative of a real system, the residence time was not sufficient for the gas composition to reach thermodynamic equilibrium. ZnO–CuO, used for H₂S removal, showed a catalytic activity significantly higher. Both sorbents seemed not active towards the methanation reaction. The pilot plant tests confirmed the occurrence of the WGS reaction in the HCl removal reactor. The sorbents decreased H₂S and HCl below the target value of 1 ppmv for H₂S and 5 ppmv for HCl. The catalytic activity of sorbents and the heat released by these reactions should be carefully considered in the design phase of high temperature gas cleaning units.

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The objective of the current work is to support the design of a pilot hydrogen and electricity producing plant that uses natural gas (or biomethane) as raw material, as a transition option towards a 100% renewable transportation system. The plant, with a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) as principal technology, is intended to be the main unit of an electric vehicle station. The refueling station has to work at different operation periods characterized by the hydrogen demand and the electricity needed for supply and self-consumption. The same set of heat exchangers has to satisfy the heating and cooling needs of the different operation periods. In order to optimize the operating variables of the pilot plant and to provide the best heat exchanger network, the applied methodology follows a systematic procedure for multi-objective, i.e. maximum plant efficiency and minimum number of heat exchanger matches, and multi-period optimization. The solving strategy combines process flow modeling in steady state, superstructure-based mathematical programming and the use of an evolutionary-based algorithm for optimization. The results show that the plant can reach a daily weighted efficiency exceeding 60%, up to 80% when considering heat utilization.@en