Microchannel reactors for Fuel processing Applications

摘要

A fuel processor is a critical reactor technology for the deployment of PEM-based fuel cells for portable, on-board, and stationary applications. The fuel processor produces hydrogen rich streams from hydrocarbon-based feedstocks in a multi-step process. Figure 1 shows one example of a complete fuel processor system including fuel vaporizer, primary conversion reactor to produce synthesis gas, water gas shift reactor, and Co clean-up reactor. Conventional fuel processing technology is based on fixed-bed reactors using conventional catalysts, which do not scale well with the small modular nature of fuel cells. Novel microchannel catalytic reactor -based fuel processors have been developed, which are small, efficient, modular, lightweight, and potentially inexpensive. This approach applies a new method of process intensification, based on rapid heat and mass transport in engineered microstructures, to facilitate exploring and deploying reactions with fast intrinsic kinetics.