Combined hydrogen production and power generation from microalgae

A combined hydrogen production and storage together with power generation from microalgae is proposed based on enhanced process integration technology (EPI). EPI consists of two core technologies: exergy recovery and process integration. Exergy recovery is performed through exergy elevation and heat coupling to minimize the exergy destruction. Furthermore, the unrecoverable energy/heat in a single process in recovered and utilized in other processes through process integration. The proposed integrated system includes a supercritical water gasification, separation, hydrogenation, and combined cycle. Microalga Chlorella vulgaris is used as a sample for modeling and evaluation. The effects of fluidization velocity and gasification pressure to energy efficiency are evaluated. From process modeling and calculation, it is shown that high total energy efficiency (higher than 60%) and electricity generation efficiency (about 40%) of can be achieved.