Fuel breadboard

Palo, D. R., Holladay, ). D., Rozmiarek, R. T., Guzman-leong, C. E., Wang, Y., Hu,)., Chin, Y.-H., Dagle, R. A., Baker E. G., Development of a soldier-portable fuel cell power system. Part I a breadboard methanol fuel processor, J. Power Sources 2002, 108, 28-34. 

Install the developed sensors on a breadboard PEM fuel cell at United Technologies Company fuel cell (UTCFC) for find testing. 

Moon et al. [59] presented a breadboard fixed-bed fuel processor for isooctane, which was composed of an ATR and high-and low-temperature shift reactors. The fuel processor was applied for testing different catalysts. A NiO/CaO/Al203 catalyst performed equivalent to a Ni/Fe/MgO/AlaOs catalyst for the autothermal reforming reaction. 

A breadboard system is often a necessary step in evaluating the major components of a fuel cell system together, and it is easier to rearrange the parts during the evaluation process. Figure 5.23 shows a breadboard system with most of the major parts laid on a table, and some parts placed beside and underneath the table. Figure 5.24 shows the V-I and W-I curves of the stack obtained from this system. It should be noted that the performance of a stack tested in a system can be quite different from that tested on a test stand, because the system may not be able to offer the best conditions for the stack. 

Picture of a 5 kW breadboard system layout. Courtesy of Wuhan Intepower Fuel Cells. 

The start-up time demand as determined experimentally for breadboard and integrated fuel processors of different design, and will be discussed in Section 9. 

Mitchell et al. described early work by the company Arthur D. Little, with a breadboard ethanol reformer that worked with partial oxidation [475]. Ethanol containing 6 vol.% water was used as feedstock. The reformer itself worked with coaxial air and fuel injection. The air feed was pre-heated to 800 °C by an electrical pre-heater. Ethanol was also vaporised and superheated to 150 °C by electrical energy ]475]. Steam was added to the feed up to a S/C ratio of 0.8. A nickel catalyst was used in the reformer. Not more than 80% conversion could be achieved in the reformer despite the high feed temperature. A 50-kW prototype of the reformer was then scaled up, which was 87 kg in weight and 72 L in volume. 

A microstructured monolith for autothermal reforming of isooctane was fabricated by Kolb et cd. from stainless steel metal foils, which were sealed to a monohthic stack of plates by laser welding [73]. A rhodium catalyst developed for this specific application was coated by a sol-gel technique onto the metal foils prior to the sealing procedure. The reactor carried a perforated plate in the inlet section to ensure flow equi-partition. At a weight hourly space velocity of 316 L (h gcat). S/C 3.3 and O/C 0.52 ratios, more than 99% conversion of the fuel was achieved. The temperature profile in the reactor was relatively flat. It decreased from 730 °C at the inlet section to 680 °C at the outlet. This was attributed to the higher wall thickness of the plate monolith compared with conventional metallic monolith technology. The reactor was later incorporated into a breadboard fuel processor (see Section 9.5). 

An early stage of plate a heat-exchanger for water-gas shift in the kW size range was described by Kolb et al. [543]. The reactor still had a three stage cross-flow design for the sake of easier fabrication. Platinum/ceria catalyst was wash-coated onto the metal plates, which were sealed by laser welding. The reactor was tested separately and showed equilibrium conversion under the experimental conditions. It was subsequently incorporated into a breadboard fuel processor (see Section 9.5). 

Emonts et al. described the combination of the resulting 50-kW reformer with a hydrogen separation membrane system (see also Section 7.4) and a 1-kW Siemens PEM fuel cell to give a complete fuel processor/fud cdl system [50]. The breadboard system still required a footprint of 3 m. A flow scheme of the system along with a photograph is provided in Figure 9.3 3 kg of a copper/zinc oxide catalyst were... 

Men et al. reported the operation of a small scale, breadboard fuel processor composed of electrically heated reactors [163]. A methanol steam reformer, two stage preferential oxidation reactors and a catalytic afterburner were switched in series. A small scale 20-W fuel cell equipped with a reformate tolerable membrane was connected to the fuel processor and operated for about 100 h. 

Figure 9.22 Coupled breadboard 1-kWei methane fuel processor/ fuel cell system as developed by Mathiak et at. [433],...

A breadboard laboratory fuel processor was then set up, which had an efficiency of between 56 and 60%. These values were lower than the calculations despite the... 

Figure 9.35 Breadboard TkWth LPG fuel processor as developed by Beckhaus et al. [610].

A breadboard gasoline fuel processor was assembled by Moon et d. [67]. Fixed bed reactors served for reforming by steam supported partial oxidation (see Section 7.1.1), followed by high and low temperature water-gas shift Commercial iron oxide/ chromium oxide catalyst was applied for high temperature shift at a 4200 h gas hourly space velocity and 450 °C reaction temperature, while the copper/zinc oxide low temperature water-gas shift catalyst was operated at 250 °C and 5600 h gas hourly space velocity. 

Qi et al. presented a 1-kW breadboard gasoline fuel processor [451]. The device consisted of a concentric reactor arrangement, similar to the design developed by Ahmed et al. [448], see Section 5.4.5. The overall dimensions were very low, a diameter of 150 mm and length 150 mm were reported by these workers [451]. The preferential oxidation reactor was a separate device, but the autothermal fixed bed reformer was positioned in the centre of the fuel processor and surrounded by annular high and low temperature water-gas shift fixed bed reactors, as shown in Figure 9.40. The feed... 

Figure 9.42 Breadboard gasoline fuel processor as built by Severin et al. [618].

Rosa et al. [251] set up a complete 5-kW diesel fuel processor based on autothermal reforming and catalytic carbon monoxide clean-up, which was dedicated to a low temperature PEM fuel cell. The breadboard system was composed of the autothermal reformer operated between 800 and 850 °C with a ruthenium/perovskite catalyst (see Section 4.2.8), a single water-gas shift reactor containing platinum/titania/ceria catalyst operated between 270 and 300 °C (see Section 4.5.1), and a preferential oxidation reactor containing platinum/alumina catalyst operated between 165 and 180 °C. Figure 9.54 shows the gas composition and reactor temperatures achieved. The hydrogen content of the reformate was in the range from 40 to 44 vol.% on a dry basis. The carbon monoxide content of the reformate was 7.4 vol.% and could be reduced to values of between 0.3 and 1 vol.% after the water-gas shift reactor and to below 100 ppm after the preferential oxidation reactor. 

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