There has been recent interest in the development of compact fuel processors to produce hydrogen for fuel cell powered vehicles. Gasoline is a promising candidate for distributed or on-board processing because of its high energy density and well-developed infrastructure. A compact fuel processor (also known as a reformer) is under development that utilizes autothermal reforming (ATR) to extract hydrogen from iso-octane, which is used as a surrogate for gasoline. The processor consists of a coaxial packed-bed catalytic reactor to promote partial oxidation, steam reforming, and water-gas-shift reactions.; As part of this system development, a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package was used to model flow and chemical reactions. Expressions for the chemical reaction kinetics were adapted from recent studies published in the literature. Reformer performance is presented in terms of hydrogen content in the product stream, reformer efficiency (LHV efficiency) and iso-octane conversion. Results are compared to experimental studies under way within the Queen's/Royal Military College reformer research group. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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