Hybrid reforming

Fig. 6 Internal reforming stack concept The hybrid reforming allows longer catalyst life and uniform cell temperature.

Figure 1.9 Hybrid, multi-scale micro-reactor plant for catalyst testing for propane steam reforming [15],...

More complex hydrocarbonaceous fuels might materialize in the long term, depending on the alternative vehicle market. The fuel development programs also include hydro-carbonaceous fuels for both, on-board reformers and for liquid hydrocarbon fuel cells. The introduction of hybrid and FC cars would inevitably reduce the share of gasoline in total fuel consumed. 

Toyota has been sharing technology with partner GM on electric, hybrid, and fuel cell cars. In 1998, the research division was testing methanol reformers and metal hydride hydrogen storage and had prototypes of each. 

In July 1998, Toyota said it would try to have a fuel cell automobile ready by 2003, but later this target date was dropped. Toyota believed that there are major cost problems for onboard reformers and saw direct hydrogen as a big technical challenge. Still, it kept working in these areas and its FCHV (fuel cell hybrid vehicle) became the first vehicle in Japan to be certified under the Road Vehicle Act. 

Small reformers R D areas include compact and low cost reformers (1-5 kW) to convert fossil fuels (natural gas, gasoline) or biomass fuels (ethanol) to hydrogen via different processes (steam reforming, partial oxidation, auto-thermal, non catalytic hybrid steam reforming). Improvements in reformer efficiency, capacities and response times, and integration of purification unit are also being studied. Examples of projects include ... 

Ni-based Catalysts. Other than the work of Kopasz et al. (discussed above), there are few systematic studies of the effect of sulfur on Ni-based catalysts used to reform liquid fuels. In one study, there is evidence of differences in sulfur tolerance between Ni-based catalysts and a comparable alu-minate without a metal. Minet et developed a hybrid fuel processor for... 

Liese E.A., Gemmen R.S. (2005) Performance comparison of internal reforming against external reforming in a solid oxide fuel cell, gas turbine hybrid system. ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power 127, 86-90. 

Originally, extractive distillation was limited to two-component problems. However, recent developments in solvent technology enabled applications of this hybrid separation in multicomponent systems as well. An example of such application is the BTX process of the GTC Technology Corp., shown in Figure 6, in which extractive distillation replaced the conventional liquid-liquid extraction to separate aromatics from catalytic reformate or pyrolysis gasoline. This led to a ca. 25% lower capital cost and a ca. 15% decrease in energy consumption (170). Some other examples of existing and potential applications of the extractive distillations are listed in Table 6. 

To date, work has been done on determining the production of both synthesis gas and hydrogen via a plasma-arc reforming process. This work will continue as well as the optimisation of the processes and the investigation of possible integration with the hybrid sulphur process. 

The degradation and combustion behavior of polycarbonate/POSS hybrid system has been reported recently.48 Different loading contents of trisilanolphenyl-POSS (TPOSS) were melt blended with polycarbonate matrix (PC). The data shown in Table 8.4 indicate that no improvement in thermal stability parameters (i.e., onset decomposition temperature and peak decomposition temperature) was observed compared to the neat polycarbonate. The thermo-oxidative degradation process of the hybrid system proved to be a complicated process, which includes hydrolysis/alcoholysis of the carbonate linkage, free radical oxidative chain degradation, reformation, and branching and cross-linking reactions. 

R. Kumar, S. Ahmed, and M. Krumpelt, Rapid-Start Reformer for Methanol and Fuel Cell Vehicles, Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Technology 96, pp. 123-127 (1996). 

---