Compact, Efficient Water Recovery for Advanced Fuel Cell Power Systems

Fuel cell power systems that run on common, high-sulfur logistic fuel have the potential to meet future demands for distributed, shipboard power generation and to generate power at forward deployed bases. A key practical problem with this technology is the need for a continuous supply of high-purity water for the fuel reformer. We propose to develop a compact, efficient, and simple water recovery system that can capture high-purity water from the reformer exhaust stream without the need for phase change and complicated purification equipment. In Phase I we proved the feasibility of this approach through proof-of-concept experiments that demonstrated key performance characteristics, mass transfer modeling and analysis to predict and scale up performance, and mechanical design of a prototype water recovery unit. We propose to build and demonstrate a prototype water recovery system in Phase II that can be integrated with a fuel cell generating system.