A Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) system is spotlighted as a military power source, which has many benefits such as mobility, efficiency and quietness. PEMFC requires pure hydrogen as a fuel and on-board reforming is a realistic way to supp...
A Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) system is spotlighted as a military power source, which has many benefits such as mobility, efficiency and quietness. PEMFC requires pure hydrogen as a fuel and on-board reforming is a realistic way to supply hydrogen. For that purpose fuel processor was developed, but is difficult to apply in real applications due to its relatively long start-up time. Two step Water Gas Shift(WGS) reactors consisting of high and low temperature reactors (HTS and LTS, respectively) mostly delay start-up time. The objective of present study is to develop and apply computational models and to design start-up protocol of WGS reactors. Transient temperature analysis was performed in each reactor with various boundary conditions. The start-up time highly depends on the wall condition and heat supply rate to WGS reactors. The start-up time is decreased with high heat supply rate. The temperature of the HTS reaches to the target very fast with the isothermal wall conditions, but the adiabatic wall condition is better for heating LTS. The optimized start-up protocol is suggested considering the results.