World's Larges Fuel Cell Power Plant to be Built in S Korea

As reported in the Korean Times, POSCO, the worlds 3rd largest steelmaker, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Pohang City and North Kyongsang Province to build a 100 megawatt (MW) per year fuel cell power plant by 2010 in Pohang. The project is part of Kyongsang Province's efforts to make the region an "energy cluster"along the eastern coast, and POSCO to become the adopter of cleaner technology.

In its first phase, POSCO Power, the companies electric power business affiliate, plans to run a 50MW plant by the second half of 2008, and fully operate the 100MW plant in three years.

POSCO Power will be investing a total of 225 billion won by 2011, which includes a 65 billion won ($69 million) investment in the construction of the plant and 120 billion won ($127 million) in research and development.

In February, POSCO signed a license and distribution agreement with FuelCell Energy (Nasdaq:FCEL) to sell DFC® power plants in South Korea. The company will eventually manufacture non-fuel cell stack equipment (the "balance of plant" portion) for plants sold around the globe. Fuel cell stack modules manufactured by FuelCell Energy in Connecticut will be shipped to customers in Asia for installation with POSCO Power balance of plants.

On March 7 FCEL announced that POSCO Power, has purchased a 2.4 megawatt (MW) power plant for installation at a site in South Korea to be announced later.

The two Direct FuelCell(®) (DFC®) units making up the order are slated for delivery to South Korea by the end of 2007, and are scheduled to be commissioned early in 2008. Upon installation, the 2.4 megawatt (MW) power plant will become the world's largest, surpassing, FuelCell Energy's 1.5 MW power plant at the 1,044-room Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina in California.

South Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE) has created significant incentives to promote the use of alternative energy. Fuel cells were among the sources MOCIE most vigorously supported, creating subsidies that currently range from $0.23 to $0.28 per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated.

FCEL produces fuel cells, ranging in size from 300 kilowatts (kW) to 2.4 MW. FuelCell Energy’s products are called Direct FuelCells because unlike most other fuel cell technologies, Direct FuelCells can use hydrocarbon fuels without the need to first create hydrogen in an external fuel processor. The fuel cells are molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFC)

In its simplest electrochemical terms, an MCFC forms carbonate (CO3 2–) ions at its cathode by combining oxygen, carbon dioxide and two electrons. The carbonate ions migrate to the anode through a carbonate electrolyte. Arriving at the anode, the carbonate ion reacts with hydrogen to produce water, carbon dioxide and two electrons

Hydrogen is made available to the anode by extracting it from a common fuel (such as by steam-reforming natural gas). This fuel cell can also use CO (present in the reformed gas) as fuel. The oxygen needed in the electrochemical reactions is supplied from air, and carbon dioxide is made available by recycling it through the anode exhaust

The DFC® architecture has the unique ability to generate electricity directly from a hydrocarbon fuel source without the need for external conversion and provision of hydrogen that’s required with other types of fuel-cell technologies. Both the reformation and the fuel-cell anode reactions occur inside the anode compartment. Any hydrocarbon fuel – such as natural gas or biomass gases – is introduced into the anode compartment along with steam. Unused fuel from the fuel cell is oxidized with fresh air and is introduced to the cathode side. The overall fuel-cell reaction is simple natural-gas conversion with air to water and CO2.

MCFCs operate at an optimal temperature that avoids the use of precious-metal electrodes required by lower-temperature fuel cells, such as polymer-electrolyte and phosphoric-acid designs, and the more expensive metals and ceramic materials required by higher-temperature solid-oxide fuel cells.The electrolyte is a mixture of lithium and potassium/sodium carbonate salts that melts between 450 and 510 °C

FuelCell Energy had a goal of reducing the cost of it 2.4 MW power plant to $3,200-3,500/kilowatt (kW) by the end of 2006.

As of January 1 FCEL had 50 MW of installed capacity at 50 installations and 25 MW of backlog. Since then it has been selected for six installations in Connecticut totaling 68 MW of capacity with a value of over $200 million. All but one of these will be CHP projects using the ~ 650 F waste heat from the plants.
These projects would allow them to reduce their costs significantly, due to the scale of manufacturing. Field installations are now running at an average of 93% availability.

Thanks to Marco for the tip.

If this is really a 100 MW per year plant, it is not such a big deal, but that is not the usual terminology.  If the Korean plant is the 2.4 MW plant announced on March 7 by FCEL it is still the largest, but I don't understand the conversion factor.

Comments

[Kit P.]

I think '100 MW per year plant' is marketing for the amount of capacity they intend to install per year. MCFCs may be idea where there is a demand for steam/hot water and the customer is willing to pay for a premium for reliability like hospitals and hotels.

I do not consider fuels cells an 'alternative energy' but a very expensive way to convert natural gas more efficiently.

The problem with biomass is that it is a very dirty and variable fuel. Biomass is renewable energy but we switched to coal because it was cleaner and more sustainable. Then we switched to oil and natural gas for the same reasons. I can make 1 MWe of anything look pretty and sustainable. At the 1000 MWe scale, biomass renewable energy production starts to get ugly.

So fuels cells demonstration project will only demonstrate that fuel cells are a more expensive way making electricity and hot water.

[david foster]

"100 MW per year" is meaningless (unless they mean it as an installation rate, as suggested above)...most likely they mean "100 MW-hours per year," which wouldn't be very large, or simply "100 MW."

[Carl Hage]

The same headline appeared more than 10 years ago, and DFC built a 2MW demonstration in Santa Clara, CA. After the test, they took the system out-- I guess it wasn't cost effective to run. The efficiency was 44% but would have been 49% without startup burners used for testing.

Info on the Santa Clara fuel cell:
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/97/97fc/FC3-2.PDF