Over the past decade, the focus of energy production has moved from fossil fuels to renewable resources, but with new technology comes new problems. Currently, there are power plants using solar and wind energy to produce power, but these plants have two major problems. The first is the waste of excess energy and second is the lack of energy during little to no sun or wind. To combat the problem of inconsistent energy supply, a combined cycle gas turbine is used to produce power using natural gas, but this process produces carbon pollution. Another method is to use a fuel cell to convert hydrogen and oxygen into water producing power in the process. The Design Team is tasked with researching and developing a model using Aspen HYSYS software for a hydrogen fired combined cycle gas power plant by optimizing the system and comparing it to traditional methods of producing power to determine if this process is more beneficial.
