Apr 20 2006
Unitel Technologies has announced that the company has designed and built a fully automated computer-controlled pilot plant for making fuel cell hydrogen from JP8. Following mechanical tests at Unitel, this unit will be shipped next month to the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
The U.S. Army Fuel Cell Technology Team at Fort Belvoir intends to use the Unitel system to fine tune the process for converting a logistical fuel into hydrogen to operate a solid oxide fuel cell stack. The end objective is to generate "quiet power" on the battlefield. Mobile applications of the technology include auxiliary power units on trucks and other military vehicles. Since the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard also use JP8, these services stand to gain from the work that will be conducted at Fort Belvoir.
Unitel's pilot unit produces 20 standard liters of hydrogen per minute, enough to generate appr. 975 watts of fuel cell power. The system includes two gas delivery modules (air and nitrogen), and two liquid delivery modules (JP8 and water). All four feeds are controlled and monitored by the computer. The outgoing products are also continuously measured and integrated, thus capturing all the data required for making exceptionally tight mass balance calculations. The actual JP8-to-hydrogen conversion takes place inside a catalytic auto-thermal reactor made of Alloy 625. The computer system provided by Unitel uses the iFix process control package from GE Fanuc. The architecture of the pilot plant makes it easy to "play with the parameters," which in turn can greatly facilitate the experimentalist's efforts to optimize the underlying process.
"Reforming JP8 or diesel into hydrogen is the ultimate challenge in the fuel cell business," says Steve Calderone, Vice President of Unitel. "While we have built many reformers that run on natural gas, propane, gasoline and ethanol, the use of JP8 as a feedstock can be somewhat tricky," he explains. "The design of this Army system was further complicated by the need for rapid startup and shutdown, while operating in a turndown range from 100% to 20%. Fortunately, the reforming experience that our engineers had previously obtained at Argonne National Laboratory was most helpful in this regard."
http://www.uniteltech.com