DEVELOPMENT OF 5–10 KW JP-8 FUELED SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELL AUXILIARY POWER UNITS FOR ARMY VEHICLE APPLICATIONS

Under the sponsorship of TARDEC, UTRC is developing 5–10 kW Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Auxiliary Power Units (APU) that will be capable of operating on JP-8 with a sulfur concentration of up to the specification’s upper limit of 3000 ppm_w. These APUs will be sized to fit within the relatively tight space available on U.S. Army vehicles such as the Abrams, Bradley and Stryker. The objective of the base development program that commenced in August 2010 is a 1000 hour TRL-5 demonstration of an APU in an Abrams configuration by mid-2013.

This SOFC system is expected to provide power to the 28 VDC vehicle bus at a net efficiency ≥35%. In addition, the noise level is anticipated to be far below that generated by combustion engine-based APU concepts.

UTRC has completed the Preliminary Design of the system and has finalized the overall system configuration and the requirements for each of the components. During the Preliminary Design phase, evaluations of the performance of sub-scale prototypes of the desulfurizer, auto-thermal reformer, and stack were completed. In the ongoing Detailed Design phase of the program, which runs through January 2012, each of the full-scale major components will be fabricated and tested.