The increased need for portable efficient power has led to the use of the fuel cell as a means of delivering that power. However, portable power also means the ability to utilize any available fuel as the situation would arise. A fuel reformer is needed that supplies the proper reformate to the fuel cell from any fuel source, eliminating the need for significant bulk, weight, and costly external reformers. Currently available reformers do not solve this problem. Acumentrics proposes to test a new paradigm in reformation that enables multi-fuel usage with no weight or volume additions to the system. In addition, this reformer will be scalable throughout the system, an enabler of units at any power range, and reliability has been verified for 10,000s hours on pipeline natural gas to date. This flexible-fuel reformer is not limited in turndown nor startup, and eliminates multiple stages external to the power-production process. This project is designed to verify those results for a wide range of fuels.
Keywords: Fuel Cell, Multi-Fuel, Reformer, Sofc, Acumentrics
