Thermodynamic Modeling of Blade Cooled Turboprop Engine Integrated to Solid Oxide Fuel Cell: A Concept

In modern turboprop engines, reduction in emission and fuel consumption is the primary goals during the development of gas turbine aero engines. In this paper, a concept has been proposed for hybridizing the air blade cooled turboprop engines by integrating it with a fuel cell. The proposed study focuses on thermodynamic analysis of a turboprop engine integrated to a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system. A solid oxide fuel cell is the perfect candidate for utilizing waste heat available at turboprop engine exhaust, through recuperation process. Integration of SOFC is ultimately leads to enhancement the overall performance of the turboprop-SOFC hybrid system. Power generated by the SOFC system can be utilized by the aircraft and in can complement the auxillary-power-unit (APU) and may even supplement it. On the basis of 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamic modeling analysis of a turboprop-SOFC system has been presented in this article. The adopted turboprop engine has operated under a wide range of operating conditions. Parametric analysis has been performed, to investigate the influence of various parameters such as compressor pressure ratio, turbine inlet temperature, air flow rate on the turboprop-SOFC hybrid system. The thermodynamic losses within each component of the hybrid system have been evaluated by the energy and exergy analysis. From the parametric analysis, it has been observed that the performance of a hybrid turboprop-SOFC system can be increased significantly by about 12-13%, when TIT increases. Moreover, the exergy destruction within the fuel cell eventually decreases as air flow rate increases, whereas in combustor the exergy destruction linearly increases with increase in air flow rate. The integration of SOFC with turboprop engine has immense potential in advancing turboprop technology, which results in developing efficient and sustainable hybrid systems for long-range transport aircraft.