Compact Fuel Reformer for Undersea Vehicle Fuel Cells

SARA is proposing to demonstrate the technology required to build a practical device which can reform a liquid hydrocarbon fuel into (1) a pure gaseous stream of hydrogen at a temperature that will allow it to be used immediately by a PEM cell, and (2) a solid waste product that contains the carbon and all of the other impurities in the liquid hydrocarbon fuel, that reformer would be uniquely well suited to the UUV mission. SARA has devised a concept for such a device which is based on physical phenomena that we have convincingly demonstrated in our work in several different fields of endeavor. This proposal is therefore a description of the SARA concept and how we believe we, along with our University partner the University of California at Irvine can achieve the production of most of the hydrogen from a long chain liquid hydrocarbon at PEM fuel cell temperature, while retaining the remaining carbon in solid form, and in a compact and inherently simple and robust device.