(617dt) The Characteristics of Diesel Steam Reforming at Pressurized Environment for the Operation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

Hydrogen energy has been emerged as one of the new regeneration energy with high potential. Also, diesel with high hydrogen energy density has been attracted for extracting hydrogen sources at fuel cell fields. There are three predominant reforming methods for this process; steam reforming (SR), partial oxidation (POX) and auto thermal reforming (ATR). Among them, SR is regard as the most appropriate method at pressurized environment because it doesnâ??t need to require compressors that consumes much power. In other words, it only needs pumps to apply pressure to the reformer. With regard to overall system efficiency, SR is significantly beneficial compared to POX and ATR. Furthermore, SR method yields the most amount of methane (CH₄) in reforming methods. This CH₄ produced from the SR method can be used as fuel source in SOFC because SOFC is operated at high temperature.

In particular, CH₄ in reformate gas can be used to control temperature in SOFC by internal reforming. Endothermic CH₄ internal reforming can keep the heat balance with the exothermic electrical reaction generated from SOFC. Consequently, the moderate CH₄ amounts are necessary in SOFC. The amount of CH₄ production can be increased in accordance with the pressure increase in reforming reactor based on Le Chatelierâ??s principle.

 In this paper, SR of commercial diesel at pressurized environment for the operation of SOFC was investigated through experiment on various conditions. The characteristics of pressurized SR were identified as the CH₄ production increase and catalytic reaction improvement. The amount of CH₄ was augmented with pressure increase in reactor. Also, catalytic activity and stability was improved with kinetic increase as pressurizing reactor.