Energy and exergy analyses of an integrated underground coal gasification with SOFC fuel cell system for multigeneration including hydrogen production Yusuf Bicer a,* , Ibrahim Dincer a,b a Clean Energy Research Laboratory, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7K4, Canada b Center of Research Excellence in Renewable Energy Research Institute King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia article info Article history: Received 6 June 2015 Received in revised form 6 August 2015 Accepted 7 August 2015 Available online 2 September 2015 Keywords: Underground coal gasification Combined cycle Solid oxide fuel cell Hydrogen production Exergy efficiency Multigeneration abstract A novel integrated system, including underground coal gasification (UCG), steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) based oil sands, syngas fueled Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC), inte- grated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) and an electrolyzer, for hydrogen production is proposed and analyzed for practical applications, especially for Alberta region in which there are huge capacity of oil sands and coal reserves. This combined multi generation system produces syngas from underground coal without mining, produced syngas is uti- lized for generating electricity from IGCC and SOFC. A part of generated electricity in the Rankine cycle is used for hydrogen production through an electrolyzer. The excess steam in IGCC is utilized for SAGD process in order to extract Bitumen from underground as in- situ extraction. Energy and exergy analyses are conducted to assess the performance of the cycle, and the effects of various system parameters on energy and exergy efficiencies of the overall system and its subsystems are studied comparatively. The overall energy and exergy efficiencies of the system are found as 29.2% and 26% respectively for 20 kg/s coal feed rate. Furthermore, the effects of varying ambient temperature and pressure, syngas temperature, coal and syngas lower heating value, air and steam injection rates on the system performance are investigated. Copyright © 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Oil sands, so-called: bituminous sand is commonly used to describe a sandstone deposit that is impregnated with a heavy, viscous bituminous material [1]. Oil sand is in fact a combina- tion of sand, water, and bitumen. The heavy bituminous ma- terial has a high viscosity under deposit conditions and cannot be extracted easily through a well by conventional production techniques. Oil sand bitumen contains high amount of * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: yusuf.bicer@uoit.ca (Y. Bicer), ibrahim.dincer@uoit.ca (I. Dincer). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy 40 (2015) 13323 e13337 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2015.08.023 0360-3199/Copyright © 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.