Acumentrics ships SOFC unit to Sweden, shows diesel usability
- Book ID
- 104436298
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 100 KB
- Volume
- 2007
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1464-2859
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✦ Synopsis
Acumentrics ships SOFC unit to Sweden, shows diesel usability
U S-based Acumentrics has shipped a 5 kW solid oxide fuel cell generator to the GlashusEtt environmental information center in Stockholm, Sweden. The firm has also recently demonstrated that synthetic JP-8 diesel can be used to run fuel cells for extended periods.
The SOFC generator was purchased by ABB Corporate Research in Västerås, Sweden together with eight other Swedish companies and organizations: FMV, Fortum, GlashusEtt, JM, Morphic, SBC, the City of Stockholm and the Swedish Energy Agency. The purpose of the installation is to evaluate SOFC technology.
Stockholm has developed an eco-friendly, waterfront district called Hammarby Sjöstad, which will house some 25 000 residents. It features solar cells, green roofs, footpaths, environmentally benign building materials, vacuumassisted refuse collection, and a wastewater treatment plant that produces biogas. The GlashusEtt, which houses Acumentrics' fuel cell system, is the district's environmental information center.
The wastewater treatment plant produces highquality biogas (97% methane) that is piped into apartments for heating and cooking. It is also used to run the fuel cell system.
In other news, Acumentrics reports that it has run a fuel cell for 1300 h on synthetic JP-8 (S-8) Fischer-Tropsch fuel. The company believes that this is one of the first times this has been done successfully in an extended run, using heavy hydrocarbons.
Because Acumentrics' ceramic fuel cells operate at high temperature, they accept lighter hydrocarbons such as propane and natural gas directly, and disassociate the fuel inside the cell -via in situ reformation. But for fuel cells to be of most use to the military, they must operate on heavy fuels. The heavy hydrocarbons in diesel and JP-8 require catalytic reforming before they can enter a cell. For this test the company employed a separate reformer acquired from InnovaTek.
The reformer system was first set up and tested independently. After initial qualification, its output was sent to a fuel cell bundle -a modular component consisting of a group of tubular SOFCs connected in parallel. The performance, flow, gas composition and temperature effects were monitored. A number of thermal cycles were also performed. The test logged more than 1300 h of operation, with no discernible performance degradation in the fuel cell or reformer.