Hydrogen generation for feeding high-temperature fuel cells

Abstract

Several methods of hydrogen production for feeding high-temperature fuel cells in high-efficiency environmentally friendly small-scale power plants are compared. As the most promising types of energy carriers for such installations, natural gas and aluminum are considered. The possibilities of producing a hydrogen- containing feed gas for high-temperature fuel cells on the basis of technologies we develop for the environmentally friendly burning of low-calorific fuels in volumetric matrix burner devices and for the efficient burning of aluminum in a high-temperature reactor are experimentally explored. It is shown that, in the technology of localized combustion of mixtures in a methane-conversion matrix, the specific yield of feed gas for fuel cells per unit area of the outlet section of the reactor is 3 times higher than that obtained for the combustion of aluminum−water mixtures at atmospheric pressure. The total specific power of the process is also 1.85 times higher. In the technology of distributed reaction, in the bubbling of steam through an aluminum melt, the specific yield of hydrogen per unit area of the reaction surface of the bubbles is an order of magnitude greater than the specific yield of hydrogen in the “cold” reaction of aluminum with a 1 M alkaline solution.