FLOX® Steam Reforming - Hydrogen for Fuel Cells

WS Reformer GmbH offers reformer solutions for different fuel cell technologies in the capacity range between 1 and 5 kW. Core technology is the FLOX® combustion, which enables a compact, cost- and material optimised reformer design. Main benefi ts are high combustion densities, no hot spots and fl ame fl ashback, even when using anode-off gas. Apart form that, a sophisticated optical flame monitoring of the hydrogen fl ames is avoided. Bill of material and number of BOP-components indicate, that the cost-targets for micro-CHP applications at large series production can be achieved. Compared with LT-PEM Systems (70 °C), HT-PEM Systems (160 °C) reveal a considerably reduced system complexity. Moreover, it can be shown, that the same electric efficiency can be achieved without significant increase of cost, although the power density of the HT-PEM stack is lower. The key is the use of excess heat of the stack (160 °C) to generate the process steam. However, this requires extreme air-preheating in the burner. Existing NOx emission limits are then only met by FLOX® combustion.