Fuel Cell Hybrids, Their Thermodynamics and Sustainable Development

The increasing demand on primary energy and the increasing concern on climatic change demand immediately a sustainable development, but still there remain open questions regarding its technical realization. The second law of thermodynamics is a very simple but efficient way to define the principle design rules of sustainable technologies in minimizing the irreversible entropy production. The ideal, but real process chain is defined by a still reversible structure or logic of the process chain—the reversible reference process chain—but consisting of real components with an irreversible entropy production on a certain level. It can easily be shown for energy conversion and for transportation that hybridization in general can indeed be a measure to meet the reversible process chain and to minimize the entropy flow to the environment. Fuel cells are principal reversible converters of chemical energy and thus a key element within hybridization. Depending on application, combined heat and power process (CHP) may be a hybridization step or only a slight improvement. There is a fundamental difference in heating a house or in supplying an endothermic chemical reaction with reaction entropy. The use of heat recovery and isolation is a necessary measure to minimize the entropy flow to the environment and can be described by a reversible reference process as well. The application of reversible reference process chains shows that hybrid systems with fuel cells are a technical feasibility to approach very closely the thermodynamic potential. This development differs from the past where the technical possibilities of materials and manufacturing limited the technology to meet reversibility and thus sustainability.