Fuel Reformation: Microchannel Reactor Design
Fuel processing is used to extract hydrogen from conventional vehicle fuel and allow fuel cell powered vehicles to use the existing petroleum fuel infrastructure. Kilowatt scale micro-channel steam reforming, water-gas shift and preferential oxida-tion reactors have been developed capable of achieving DOE required system performance metrics. Use of a microchannel design effectively supplies heat to the highly endothermic steam reforming reactor to maintain high conversions, controls the temperature profile for the exothermic water gas shift reactor, which optimizes the overall reaction conversion, and removes heat to prevent the unwanted hydrogen oxidation in the prefer-ential oxidation reactor. The reactors combined with micro-channel heat exchangers, when scaled to a full sized 50 kWe automotive system, will be less than 21 L in volume and 52 kg in weight.
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 915315
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-42332; HI0400000
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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