Catalysis of Nuvera's On-Board Fuel Processor for Fuel Cell Vehicles

Nuvera's state-of-the-art on-board fuel processor is a very compact system with catalyst and heat exchanger volume of 80 liters, with a maximum power input of 215 kWth, and with hydrogen efficiencies capabilities above 77%. For our fuel processor we use four distinct reaction zones, ATR-HTS-LTS- PrOx. The entire fuel processor, with balance of plant controls components, can be packaged in a volume of 150-liter designed to fit in the floor of a vehicle.The on-board fuel processor design is quite flexible; it can operate on a number of fuels including gasoline, diesel, ethanol, methanol and gas fuels, and the fuel processor can be either scaled up or scaled down for other applications, for example, APU systems. Also, the on- board fuel processors were integrated successfully with Nuvera's automotive PEM fuel cell stacks. A fuel processor start-up time of less than 4 minutes was achieved to the target value for the fuel cell.