Micro-combined heating and power generation and an economical and technical comparison of fuel cell technologies used in it

Nowadays secondary energy depends on great value of fossil fuels combustion in the world. But fossil fuels combustion has low efficiency and received gases of the combustion are considered as a main element of environment pollutions. Fuel cell is identified as a modern technology of conversion chemical energy to electrical energy in the world. Nevertheless, phosphoric acid fuel cells have been considered as a most perfect fuel cell type. PAFCs are utilized in large scale CHP arena successfully. Several micro-CHP systems using Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology have been developed and tested that could indicated Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited (CFCL) has been developing flat plate SOFC technology for recent years. Each type of fuel cell has both advantages and disadvantages in comparison with other fuel cell technologies and DER equipments in various locations. In this paper, advantages and disadvantages of major fuel cell types have been compared. The best fuel cell selected with consideration of the details of the application. In this paper, fuel cell characteristics are given.