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The pace of replacement of petroleum-based fuels as the primary fuel supply for transportation may still be a point of debate. However, the need to find a viable replacement fuel or group of fuels is no longer a major point of debate. The panel will outline what has changed on the journey during the past few years and what the future holds. Viewpoints from government, the military, fuel suppliers and academia will be presented.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) appear to be a promising solution for the future of clean and efficient personal transportation. Issues of how to generate the hydrogen and then store it on-board to provide satisfactory driving range must still be resolved before they can compete with conventional vehicles. Alternatively, FCVs could obtain hydrogen from on-board reforming of gasoline or other fuels such as methanol or ethanol. On-board reformers convert fuel into a hydrogen-rich fuel stream through catalytic reactions in several stages. The high temperatures associated with fuel processing present an engineering challenge to warm up the reformer quickly and efficiently in a vehicle environment. Without a special warmup phase or vehicle hybridization, the reformer and fuel cell system must provide all power to move the vehicle, including ¼ power in 30 s, and ½ power in 3 min to satisfy the Federal Test Procedure (FTP) cycle demands.

UTC Fuel Cells (UTCFC) is committed to the commercialization of fuel cell power plants for transportation applications. The focus of our program is an ambient-pressure power plant system using proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell technology. The primary fuels being considered are hydrogen and gasoline. The use of gasoline requires a fuel processing system to convert the gasoline to a hydrogen rich gas. The gasoline fuel processing system utilizes fuel-flexible reforming technology that can be modified to accommodate fuels such as methanol, ethanol and natural gas. The program addresses the technology development and verification of each of the necessary components, subsystems and, ultimately, fully integrated power plant systems. Under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Transportation Technologies, UTCFC built and operated a fully-integrated, 50 kW gasoline fueled PEM fuel cell power plant. This power plant is a critical element to our overall program.