Improved performance of a residential combined heat and power system by integrating compact fuel processor and proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Abstract

Abstract A combined heat and power (CHP) system, which consists of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell and an integrated fuel processor is developed based on solving the energy balance between endothermic and exothermic hydrogen production reactions. The developed system simplifies the traditional complex fuel processing, and only three reactor units are needed—catalytic combustion, new integrated hydrogen production reactor and CO removal. In the novel CHP system, the H2‐rich reformate production from methanol and water is approximately 8 Nm3 h−1 with an H2 concentration of 53%–55% and CO less than 30 ppm. The CHP system was run continuously for more than 1100 h. The power demand was observed to be about 2–9 kW corresponding to the usual load of a residential unit. To increase the whole system efficiency, anode off‐gas (AOG) from fuel cell was returned to the fuel processor and utilized in the catalytic combustion reactor to improve the energy efficiency of the whole system. The average system efficiency can be increased from 60.3% to 67% by utilization of the energy from AOG catalytic combustion.

Keywords

• combined heat and power
• fuel cell
• fuel processor
• integrated reactor
• reformate gas