A Model of Life Cycle on Biogas Feed to Solid Oxide Fuel Cell in Malaysia: Economic and Environmental Perspective

Abstract

Abundant of palm oil waste creates huge potential in producing biogas. Technically, biogas can be fed as an input gas into the fuel cell system to get the electricity output. This paper aims to estimate the life cycle costs and environmental impact for the biogas feed to the solid oxide fuel cell system in two different models: Individual System and Centralized System. Then the system boundary-setting starts from palm oil plantation until the fuel cell system. The result indicates that the individual system is more efficient due to lower cost and emission compared to the centralized system. Life cycle cost for the individual and centralized system is RM 2.56 / kWh and RM 7.04 / kWh, respectively. Then the carbon dioxide emissions are 0.2034 CO2-EQ / kWh and 0.61 CO2-EQ / kWh. Hopefully, the outcome from this paper will be able to assist the decisionmaker in planning to model the fuel cell combining with biogas system in the future. Apart from that, its objective is to focus on cost-efficient and more sustainable electricity generation.