Production Techniques for Fuel Processors

Cheap fabrication techniques feasible for mass production need to be applied for fuel processors. The various techniques available for micro structured fuel processors will be discussed in Section 2.9. 

The choice of materials for microstructured fuel processors is mainly determined by the operating temperature and pressure. Because fuel processors are future mass products, only cheap fabrication techniques can be considered in the longer term. Hence only techniques suited for future mass production of microstructured fuel processors are briefly discussed below other techniques have been discussed in detail in other books [86, 87]. 

The critical technology development areas are advanced materials, manufacturing techniques, and other advancements that will lower costs, increase durability, and improve reliability and performance for all fuel cell systems and applications. These activities need to address not only core fuel cell stack issues but also balance of plant (BOP) subsystems such as fuel processors hydrogen production, delivery, and storage power electronics sensors and controls air handling equipment and heat exchangers. Research and development areas include ... 

Micro structured heat exchanger reactors offer unique capabilities of improving fuel processor performance as described in the sections above. However, manufacturing costs are currently considerably higher than for conventional mature technology. This will be overcome in the future with the application of cheap manufacturing and coating techniques suitable for mass production (see Sections 2.9 and 2.10), a procedure which is currently underway. 

The special issue of micro injection molding applied for polymer heat exchangers will not be considered here. Additionally, for MEMS-like systems discussed above, other techniques, mostly based on etching, e.g. deep reactive ion etching (DR1E), are applied [20, 71, 86]. These techniques allow for future mass production of the small-scale (sub-watt fuel processors) devices to which they are applied. 

Techniques for the production of chip-like systems will be discussed below. These techniques should allow the cost-efficient mass production of the smallest scale (sub-Watt) fuel processors in the future. 

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