Design and analysis of heptane reformer for hydrogen production for use in fuel cell applications

Stationary power applications include commonly powered devices in the household (e.g. lights, fan, refrigerator etc.). Most urban areas have access to power via the electricity grid. However, in hurricane prone areas, power outages are common. Also, some remote areas (e.g. campsites) do not have access to the electricity grid. For such situations, a readily available hydrocarbon such as gasoline could be used to generate power. In this thesis a reformer is designed to utilize heptane as a hydrocarbon source to produce sufficient hydrogen to power a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that generates 1 kW of power. Principles of isothermal reactor design of a packed bed reactor with pressure drop were utilized to model the reformer. The effect of temperature, inlet pressure and water to heptane ratio on the production of hydrogen was studied. Then an SOFC stack was designed to generate 1 kW of power using the hydrogen from the reformer.