Feasibility of Fuel Cell APUs for Automotive Applications

Fuel cells are currently being evaluated for many applications, including portable power transportation, and large stationary systems. The US military is looking at fuel cells to help reduce its use of fuel in the battlefield, and to more adequately address the vehicle electrical power demands not being fulfilled by batteries and on-board generators. Hydrogen will not be used in the battlefield for a long time, if ever, and so the primary concern for introduction of military vehicle fuel cells is on-board fuel processing. Because of the military's decision to implement the Single Fuel Forward policy, JP-8 (and JP-5) is the primary fuel used in the battlefield. When acquired outside of the US where fuel quality is not necessarily regulated, this can lead to sulfur levels of up to 3000 ppm, which are several orders of magnitude above the tolerance of current fuel cell and reformer systems. The Army has several fuel cell programs for vehicle applications currently underway, ranging from successful processing of JP-8 to vehicle demonstration programs, with the hope that those two areas will eventually converge during the technology evolution process.