Innovative Natural-gas Technologies for Efficiency Gain in Reliable and Affordable Thermochemical Electricity-generation
Program Description:
The projects that comprise ARPA-E’s INTEGRATE (Innovative Natural-gas Technologies for Efficiency Gain in Reliable and Affordable Thermochemical Electricity-generation) program will develop natural gas fueled, distributed, ultra-high efficiency electrical generation systems. The program will focus on hybrid system designs that integrate a fuel cell with a heat or reactive engine, such as a gas turbine or a reciprocating internal combustion engine. The INTEGRATE program encourages the development and demonstration of integrated hybrid systems and/or enabling component technologies.
Project teams will seek to develop devices that can generate electricity at greater than 70% efficiency while keeping system costs competitive at commercial scales of 100kW or greater. Projects will take advantage of the synergies between fuel cells and more traditional combustion engines. For example, some of the fuel that passes through a fuel cell will remain “unreacted.” This leftover fuel can be used by an engine to produce combustion products that produce additional power—improving overall system efficiency. Because the engine can be used simultaneously to generate power and act as balance-of-plant for the fuel cell, eliminating the need for some components, system cost savings could be significant.
Innovation Need:
The U.S. electric system is dominated by large, central power plants and an extensive transmission and distribution system commonly referred to as the “grid.” While this system is one of the greatest technical achievements of the 20th Century, the centralized power model remains highly energy inefficient, losing approximately two-thirds of the primary energy potential of the supplied fuel (e.g. coal or natural gas) during generation and transmission. There is an opportunity, however, to replace at least a portion of this centralized system with a more efficient and cost-effective distributed energy model. Technological advances in fields like microturbines, reciprocating engines, and fuel cells make possible a broad range of distributed energy concepts. The INTEGRATE program seeks to enable the energy, economic and emissions benefits needed to dramatically increase the adoption rate of these distributed energy technologies, improving the overall efficiency of the U.S. electric generation sector.
Potential Impact:
If successful, INTEGRATE projects will enable a revolutionary new class of electrical generation systems with applications for commercial and industrial power customers across the economy.
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Project Listing
• FuelCell Energy - Adaptive SOFC for Ultra High Efficiency Power Systems
• National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) - Operation and Control of Hybrid Power Systems
• Nexceris - Advanced Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Stack for Hybrid Power Systems
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) - A Natural-gas based High Efficiency Combined Thermo-chemical Affordable Reactor (NECTAR)
• Saint-Gobain Ceramics & Plastics - Super High-Efficiency Integrated Fuel-Cell and Turbo-Machinery - SHIFT
• Stony Brook University - Hybrid Electrochemistry and Advanced Combustion for High Efficiency Power
• University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) - An Integrated High Pressure SOFC and Premixed Compression Ignition Engine System
• Washington State University (WSU) - De-Coupled Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Gas Turbine Hybrid (dFC-GT)