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Concern over global warming due to emission of green house gases has generated considerable interests and intensive development of fuel cells. In order to reduce the fuel cell manufacturing costs and to improve its performance and reliability, a better understanding of the fuel and oxidant species transport processes within fuel cell stack is important for fuel cell design. Fuel and oxidant stream flow distributions within a stack have significant impact on fuel cell performance and efficiency. To this end, this investigation presents the effects of the fuel and oxidant flow distributions on fuel cell stack performance with a model of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer including the electrochemical reaction, within a molten carbonate fuel cell under different gas supply conditions.

With changing weather patterns or clouds moving over a given utility service area, the power generated by any photovoltaic (PV) power systems in that service area will vary tremendously. Depending on the percentage penetration of these PV systems on a distribution feeder, these variations in the PV systems' performance may cause undesirable voltage fluctuations along the feeder and also may impact the operation of the voltage regulating equipment on the distribution feeder. A computer program was developed to allow the utility engineer to determine the impact of the fluctuating PV generation due to moving cloud patterns. This impact is determined on the distribution system level by monitoring the feeder voltage profile and the operation of any voltage regulating devices. The model is rigorous and includes modeling capabilities beyond those of previous investigations. >