Synergy Technologies Corp. (Canada) announced that a 2.5 liter SynGen reactor system, designed by the company and installed at its Calgary facility, had successfully reformed feeds of natural gas into the hydrogen-rich fuel required for fuel cells. The company claims that the 2.5 liter system, which has been developed to demonstrate and optimize reformer design for the home and automotive fuel cell markets, will also be used to optimize the insitu water shift reaction to increase hydrogen production.
The insitu water shift process is used to maximize hydrogen production for PEM and alkaline fuel cells, which cannot consume carbon monoxide as fuel as is the case with Solid oxide (SOFC) and Molten Carbonate (MCFC) fuel cells. The process causes injected water recovered from the fuel cell to react with carbon monoxide to produce carbon dioxide and additional hydrogen. Test work performed in Orleans, France has shown that SynGen can achieve a high insitu conversion of carbon monoxide. According to the company, SynGen reformers exhibit a high degree of scalability, and energy efficiency.
“We have analyzed many of the various types of fuel cells being developed in the marketplace, as well as their fuel requirements,” said Thomas E. Cooley, Synergy's CEO and chief technology officer, “and we believe the 2.5 liter SynGen reactor system offers significant size and cost benefits in many stationary fuel cell applications. Also, based on the testing results to date, we are confident that SynGen will prove to be an excellent fit for on-board fuel cell systems based on liquid fossil fuels.”
