Development and Evaluation of Multi-Fuel Fuel Cell Power Plant for Transportation Applications

The work described here reports the results of International Fuel Cells' development and testing of fuel processors capable of generating hydrogen from gasoline, methanol and other fuels intended for automotive service. The results provided describe the characteristics of both complete fuel processors and individual fuel processing train elements and components.

The work we are conducting is being done in cooperation with automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturers. The direction is set by their needs, and the market picture they need to address.

Our conclusion from this work is that a practical automotive fuel processor for the generation of PEM fuel cell quality hydrogen from California Reformulated Gasoline Phase II can be based on a process train consisting of an in-line desulfurizer, auto thermal reformer, shift converter and selective oxidizer.