| OCR Text |
Show PAPER NO. 44 Development of Reformer Burner Design Criteria for Pressurized Fuel Cell Power Plant Application A.Ha*gi wara*, Y.Higashi and T.Suzuki** A reformer burner design criteria was proposed here to clarify the present understanding of pressurized fuel cell plant application. Four burners were tested and comparison was made for their performance. Also, the effect of pressure on flames were studied both experimentally and theoretically. The experimental results determined the dependency of flame radiation and NOx emission on pressure. Theoretical consideration gave rise the question as to the use of a mathematical model for the prediction of pressurized flames. 1. Introduction A steam reformer for fuel cell power plants is equipped with a burner which supplies heat necessary for steam reforming reaction. This burner fires natural gas when the reformer is in the process of heating-up, while it uses low calorific value fuel gas exhausted from the anode of the fuel cell when the plant is in load operation. For large capacity fuel cell power plants, the system is pressurized, so that the burner is also operated at pressurized condition. Although it is desirable to carry out pressurized combustion tests so as to design such burne'rs, atmospheric pressure tests are usually used because of the high cost of carrying out a pressurized combustion test. Unfortunately, there is little data concerning the prediction of pressurized flames from measurements in atmospheric flames. The present study was designed to supplement this data and to devise design criteria for rational burner development. 1.1 Fuel Cell Power Plant Fuel cells can be described as a direct power generation method which directly converts chemical energy of fuel into electrical energy under the electrode processes for hydrogen and * The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc. ** Kobe Steel Ltd. 1 |
