Development of compact fuel processor for 2 kW class residential PEMFCs

摘要

Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has been developing a novel fuel processing system to provide hydrogen rich gas to residential polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) cogeneration system. For the effective design of a compact hydrogen production system, the unit processes of steam reforming, high and low temperature water gas shift, steam generator and internal heat exchangers are thermally and physically integrated into a packaged hardware system. Several prototypes are under development and the prototype Ⅰ fuel processor showed thermal efficiency of 73% as a HHV basis with methane conversion of 81%. Recently tested prototype Ⅱ has been shown the improved performance of thermal efficiency of 76% with methane conversion of 83%. In both prototypes, two-stage PrOx reactors reduce CO concentration less than 10ppm, which is the prerequisite CO limit condition of product gas for the PEMFCs stack. After confirming the initial performance of prototype Ⅰ fuel processor, it is coupled with PEMFC single cell to test the durability and demonstrated that the fuel processor is operated for 3 days successfully without any failure of fuel cell voltage. Prototype Ⅱ fuel processor also showed stable performance during the durability test.