Distributed Waste Treatment (DWT) in Buildings: Biogas-from-Waste for SOFC-Based Trigeneration 

Wang Qiancheng1 , Ni Meng1 , Qin Weicong1 , and Xu Qian2 

1. Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China 

2. Department of Building, National University of Singapore, Singapore 

Abstract: Organic waste has been a major concern in terms of environmental aspect. The application of Distributed Waste Treatment (DWT) reduces the environmental influences and improves the integrated utilization rate of recyclable energy and materials within organic waste. Organic waste in buildings can be recycled by the Waste-to-Gas system to generate biogas as fuel for SOFC based Trigeneration (SOFC-TG) system. This combined system is a promising energy solution where cooling, heating and electricity generation are achieved at a high efficiency with SOFC-absorption cooling trigeneration configuration for green buildings. The fuel flexibility of SOFC makes the biogas-from-waste an attractive alternative to commercial energy source (e.g., natural gas) as fuel for the combined systems for building application. This study discusses the application of SOFC-based trigeneration using biogas-from-waste and a case study of Hotel Icon Hong Kong is adopted to evaluate its feasibility. 

Key words: waste-to-energy, solid oxide fuel cell, tri-generation