NSF Award
9461199
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the possibility of employing currently used liquid fuels in fuel-cell vehicles. Fuel cells of commercial interest operate on streams of (nearly) pure hydrogen, which is not readily available in most vehicles. Neither is a source of hydrogen convenient and safe to carry on board commercial trucks, buses and other vehicles. Liquid fuels, however, are easily available and routinely handled. The wide use of fuel cells will require conversion of standard fuels into hydrogen, or hydrogen/CO2 mixtures, with only traces of CO and sulfur. This will require a multi-step process to be carried out on-board vehicles. The use of reformers for generation of hydrogen from light hydrocarbons has already been demonstrated. The objective of Phase I is to show the technical and economic feasibility of using an on-board hydropyrolysis unit to preprocess diesel fuel (heavy hydrocarbons) for the reformer. Three tasks are envisaged: 1) Simulation of the hydropyrolysis/reformer/shift reactor/fuel cell system using a pyrolysis/hydropyrolysis model developed at Advanced Fuel Research, and the ASPEN software; 2) Design, construction and testing of a laboratory-scale hydropyrolysis unit; and 3) Assessment of the fuel preprocessing system (materials requirements, transient response, part-load efficiency, emissions, economics and life-limiting factors). Phase II would involve the design, construction and testing of a prototype system in cooperation with a fuel cell vendor. The expected results of the Phase I and Phase II projects would be a prototype preprocessing unit that would be coupled with a portable reformer and which would allow diesel fuels to be used with currently available (hydrogen) fuel cells. The system would also be flexible enough to be used with the next generation fuel cells which could directly utilize light hydrocarbons. Employing standard petroleum-based fuels to power fuel-cell vehicles would greatly facilitate the transition from internal-combustion engine to fuel-cell technologies.
