Flex-fuel hydrogen generator for IC engines and gas turbines

A method of operating an on-board Flex-Fuel H2 Generator comprising:

• a). providing one or more parallel autothermal (ATR) reformers for producing H2 and CO from hydrocarbons and/or bio-fuels over supported and/or unsupported Pt group catalysts;
• b). providing one automatic control system comprising a control computer and microprocessors, flow meters/controllers, valves, pumps, sensors and thermocouples;
• c). providing to the one or more reformers a stream of reactants of an inlet fuel mixture comprising at least one oxidant, at least one fuel and at least one water/steam, wherein the reactants are selected from a reactant supply group consisting of a liquid fuel loop, a gas fuel loop, a water supply loop, an air supply loop, a water electrolyzer loop, an exhaust gas recycle (EGR) loop, a water recycle loop and a reformate recycle loop;
• d). reacting said stream of the inlet fuel mixture over said catalysts inside the one or more ATR reformers to produce a reformate containing H2 and CO from said reactants;
• e). providing one or more vessels/manifolds for storing condensed water from the one or more reformers and also storing said reformate produced from the one or more ATR reformers at a pressure between 1 to 100 atmospheres, which is used by a downstream IC engine or gas turbine;
• f). providing one or more flow control curves defined by pressure in the one or more storage vessels as a function of reformer output capacity for regulating each reactants flow rate, the reformate composition, the one or more reformer's start-up/shutdown and the total reformer's flow output, wherein:
• f.1). a single point on a given control curve supplies:
• i. a group of pre-calibrated and pre-stored set points for all flow meters/controllers, which is down loaded from the control computer and/or the microprocessors for the purpose of controlling each reactant's flow rate;
• ii. a specified reformer's inlet fuel mixture which is at a given O2/C, H2O/C and CO2/C ratios according to said set points;
• iii. a specified reformate dry gas composition which is produced by the one or more reformers from said inlet fuel mixture and is stored in the one or more storage vessels, and
• iv. a specified amount of the reformate output which is produced by the one or more reformers at a given flow rate according to the location on the given control curve;
• f.2). multiple points on the same control curve are capable of producing a series of different flow outputs with the same reformate composition;
• f.3). multiple different pre-calibrated control curves are used to provide different reformer inlet fuel mixtures, and are used by the same reformer to produce H2 and CO reformate from various fuels and/or bio-fuels.