Control Sensitivity Study for a Hybrid Fuel Cell/Gas Turbine System

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has developed a hardware simulator to test the operating characteristics of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell/Gas Turbine (SOFC/GT) hybrid systems. The Hybrid Performance (HyPer) simulator has been described previously, and has contributed to the understanding of SOFC/GT system operation. HyPer contains not only the requisite elements of gas turbine/compressor/generator, recuperator, combustor, and associated piping, but also several air flow control valves that are proposed as system control mechanisms. It is necessary to know how operation of these valves affects the various entities such as cathode air flow, turbine speed, and various temperatures important to the safe and efficient operation of fuel cell/gas turbine hybrid systems. To determine the interactions among key variables, a series of experiments was performed in which the effect of modulating each of the key manipulated variables was recorded. This document outlines the test methods used and presents some of the data from those tests, along with analysis and interpretation of that data in the context of control system design.