System model development for a methanol reformed 5 kW high temperature PEM fuel cell system

Sahlin, Simon Lennart; Andreasen, Søren Juhl; Kær, Søren Knudsen

doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2015.07.145

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Power demands for APU applications are typically in the kilowatt scales. Methanol reformate gas–fueled HT‐PEMFCs systems have been recently investigated in other studies . Sahlin et al studied a reforming methanol system in an oil heated reformer system for a 5‐kW fuel cell system.…”

Section: Reformed Methanol Fuel Cell Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An overview of the methanol reforming process: Comparison of fuels, catalysts, reformers, and systems

et al. 2019

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Summary One of the main challenges facing power generation by fuel cells involves the difficulties related to hydrogen storage. Several methods have been suggested and studied by researchers to overcome this problem. Among these methods, using fuel reformers as a component of the fuel cell system is a practical and promising alternative to hydrogen storage. Among many hydrogen carrier fuels used in reformers, methanol is one of the most attractive ones because of its distinctive properties. To design and improve of the methanol reformate gas fuel cell systems, different aspects such as promising market applications for reformate gas–fueled fuel cell systems, and catalysts for methanol reforming should be considered. Therefore, our goal in this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview on the past and recent studies regarding methanol reforming technologies, while considering different aspects of this topic. Firstly, different fuel reforming processes are briefly explained in the first section of the paper. Then properties of various fuels and reforming of these fuels are compared, and the characteristics of commercial reformate gas–fueled systems are presented. The main objective of the first section of the paper is to give information about studies and market applications related to reformation of various fuels to understand advantages and disadvantages of using various fuels for different practical applications. In the next sections of the paper, advancements in the methanol reforming technology are explained. The methanol reforming catalysts and reaction kinetics studies by various researchers are reviewed, and the advantages and disadvantages of each catalyst are discussed, followed by presenting the studies accomplished on different types of reformers. The effects of operating parameters on methanol reforming are also discussed. In the last section of this paper, methanol reformate gas–fueled fuel cell systems are reviewed. Overall, this review paper provides insight to researchers on what has been accomplished so far in the field of methanol reforming for fuel cell power generation applications to better plan the next stage of studies in this field.

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Section: Reformed Methanol Fuel Cell Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An overview of the methanol reforming process: Comparison of fuels, catalysts, reformers, and systems

et al. 2019

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“…High conversion of methanol can be achieved at high temperatures and with high S/C ratios. Sahlin et al carried out a modelling study for a MSR system for a 5 kW PEMFC system . The system includes four main components: a fuel evaporator, a steam reformer, a catalytic burner and a fuel cell stack.…”

Section: Heat Integration In the Fuel Cell – Fuel Processor Power Sysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The system was connected with two oil circuits which was used to transfer heat in the system; one with the burner and reformer and one with the fuel cell and evaporator. However, because of the temperature mismatch between the methanol reformer with desired operating temperature of 280–300 °C and the state‐of‐the‐art PA/PBI HT‐PEMFCs (160 °C), these two circuits have to be separated, as shown in Figure . In this system, inner insulating layers are needed to establish and maintain the required temperatures within the system, and a robust control system is required to take into account the delays through the system, e.g., from the methanol supply to the fuel cell stack.…”

Section: Heat Integration In the Fuel Cell – Fuel Processor Power Sysmentioning

confidence: 99%

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High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells for Integrated Fuel Cell – Methanol Reformer Power Systems: A Critical Review

Zhang

Xiang

et al. 2018

Advanced Sustainable Systems

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be generally divided into low temperature fuel cells such as alkaline fuel cells (AFCs), polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFCs) and high temperature fuel cells such as molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Due to their high power-output, fast start-up/shut-down cycles and continuous power supply mode, PEMFCs are particularly applicable as energy sources in portable electronic devices, communication and transportation applications. [1] The core component of PEMFCs is the membrane-electrode-assembly (MEA), which consists of a proton conducting polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) sandwiched between anode and cathode catalyst layer. In the case of hydrogen fuel, H 2 is oxidized at the anode and protons are transported through the PEM to the cathode. At the cathode, protons are combined with electrons flew through external circuit, reducing ambient oxygen to water. The operation principle of a PEMFC is illustrated in Figure 1. Perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) membranes such as Nafion are the most common and successful PEMs for low temperature PEMFCs (i.e., operation at 80 °C or below) and possess a high acidity, high conductivity (e.g., for Nafion 117, conductivity can be as high as ∼0.1 S cm -1 at 30 °C and 100% relative humidity [2] ), and high chemical and structural stability. [3] However, Nafion membrane must be fully hydrated in order to have the high proton conductivity and the stable operation of Nafion membrane based fuel cells because its proton conductivity decreases rapidly with the decrease in relative humidity (RH). [4] Thereby, the operation temperatures are limited to 80 °C or below under ambient pressure in order to maintain a high water content in the membrane. As proton transport requires an aqueous medium or water to maintain the high conductivity, water management is critical for the stable operation of Nafion based PEMFCs. In the case of transportation applications, water-based PEMFC stacks also require adequate heat management, e.g., large radiators/heat exchangers to extract the heat. Another critical issue for PFSA membrane based PEMFCs is the requirement of high purity H 2 as the Pt based electrocatalysts shows a very low resistance to the fuel The development of reliable power sources is important for the continuous operation of various electric equipment in unmanned aircraft and the field environment. Currently electric power delivery to such systems is mainly by battery packs. An alternative is to use fuel cells (FCs). FCs are electrochemical devices that are used to convert chemical energy of fuels such as hydrogen and methanol to electricity. Methanol is an attractive fuel because it is liquid at ambient temperature, has a much higher energy density than hydrogen and low reforming temperature (220-300 °C). Thus, integration of methanol steam reformers (MSRs) with FCs makes it possible to continuously produce electricity. The key challenge in such power system is the development of fuel cells which can be effe...

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“…So, hydrogen must be extracted either from other natural resources through various means or could be produced on-board by reforming process [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. As a viable alternative of carrying pure hydrogen and lack of hydrogen dispensing infrastructure, onboard hydrogen generation by reforming hydrocarbon fuels available in established nationwide refueling stations such as natural gas, gasoline, diesel, propane or alcohol-based bio-fuels would be an obvious choice [2][3][4][5][6][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The only issue of using reformate fuel into the PEMFC stack is to degradation of PEMFC stack performance due to poisoning of Pt catalyst, used in PEMFC, by the carbon 4 monoxide (CO) presence in the reformate fuel [1][2].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental performance evaluation of a combustion heat-assisted catalytic flat plate fuel reformer for fuel cell grade hydrogen

Das

Gadde

2015

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

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Combining exothermic catalytic combustion heat on one side of a very high heat convective thin flat plate and endothermic catalytic reforming reaction on the other side, catalytic flat plate provides excellent heat integration into a compact fuel reformer system. Based on a twodimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model simulation results, a real world compact catalytic flat plate fuel reformer was built and experimentally evaluated its performance, for generating fuel cell grade hydrogen, in an actual high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell system. The two-dimensional CFD model helps to optimize various design parameters necessary to build the actual compact reformer and eliminated the uncertainties of heat and mass transfer coefficient values arise in one-dimensional CFD model. The performance of the compact catalytic flat plate fuel reformer was evaluated using a 5-cell high temperature PEM fuel cell stack at 160 o C with reformate fed directly from the reformer to the anode stream of fuel cell stack. For performance comparison, a 5-cell high temperature PEM fuel cell stack was first evaluated with industry-standard pure hydrogen (0% CO) as well as with various percentage of CO mixed hydrogen (2%CO and 5%CO). Experimental results showed that if the average cell voltage drop within 0.03~0.05mV of a 5-cell high temperature PEM fuel cell stack would be acceptable then the reformate can be used at 160 o C instead of pure hydrogen. The experimental results also indicated that the reformer will be able to provide actual fuel cell grade hydrogen that could be directly pumped from the compact catalytic flat plate fuel reformer into the high temperature PEM fuel cell stack.

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System model development for a methanol reformed 5 kW high temperature PEM fuel cell system

Cited by 28 publications

References 18 publications

An overview of the methanol reforming process: Comparison of fuels, catalysts, reformers, and systems

An overview of the methanol reforming process: Comparison of fuels, catalysts, reformers, and systems

High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells for Integrated Fuel Cell – Methanol Reformer Power Systems: A Critical Review

Experimental performance evaluation of a combustion heat-assisted catalytic flat plate fuel reformer for fuel cell grade hydrogen

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