Aiming at designing biogas-to-electricity advanced systems, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells are promising candidates. They benefit from scalability on plant sizes that suit anaerobic digesters potentialities. For biogas-Solid Oxide Fuel Cells applications, the implementation of an external pre-reformer is usually considered. However, the possibility to perform direct fuel feeding to the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell offers new opportunities towards the realization of lean systems, which are competitive especially on small-scale installations (i.e. on-farm biogas-to-electricity conversion). In this frame, scientific literature is rather poor and, to cover this gap, system simulations are called for two reasons: first, to demonstrate the potential efficiency gain of new concepts; second, to provide a meaningful support for long-term experimental investigation on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells operated upon direct feeding of unreformed biogas.
Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313768833_Upgrading_versus_reforming_an_energy_and_exergy_analysis_of_two_Solid_Oxide_Fuel_Cell-based_systems_for_a_convenient_biogas-to-electricity_conversion [accessed Feb 08 2018].