(189p) A Study on Maximizing the Energy Utilization of Process Operation By Integrating Multiple Energy Sources

Process industries are under heavy pressure to minimize the operation cost by improving their energy costs. The external environment is continuously changing with the increasing price of fossil fuels and the deviating outputs of renewable sources. Therefore process industry should be prepared to get involved in multiple sources of different energy sources. Multiple sources can be organized into a hybrid system to have a synchronized effect. This paper investigates the technical and economic feasibility of the hybrid system. This paper is specifically concerned with a hybrid system consisting of a wind turbine, an electrolyzer, hydrogen storage, and a fuel cell. Excess energy produced by the wind turbine is transformed into hydrogen by electrolyzer and stored. The hydrogen may thus be used directly as a fuel or converted back to electricity by a fuel cell later. Therefore, the redundant wind power that could be curtained can be stored and used again. The feasibility study like the proposed one allows us to recognize the key bottleneck technologies for accelerating the introduction of hybrid systems and the associated electrolysis technologies.