I-Corps: Commercializing a Sulfur-Tolerant JP-8 Fuel Converter

能源的运输、分配和利用是军队面临的主要问题。为了简化后勤，美军选择JP-8作为唯一的战场燃料。虽然JP-8在燃烧发电机中很有用，但由于缺乏低分子量碳氢化合物和高浓度含硫分子，商用燃气器具和能量密集的便携式燃料电池无法使用。几种商用燃料转换器可以将JP-8转化为合成气或氢气；但工艺的复杂性和不耐硫性阻碍了它们的广泛采用。因此，目前的提案探索了南卡罗来纳大学开发的一种新的燃料改造方法。燃料转换器接受各种运输燃料，包括JP-8，并产生低分子量碳氢化合物的混合物。与氢气相比，该过程产生的产品易于压缩和储存，并且更通用于固体氧化物燃料电池，商业燃气器具和燃烧发电机。沸石基催化剂是燃料转化技术的核心；它抗焦化，抗硫中毒，在低转化温度下有活性。催化过程的两个最强属性是其耐硫性和低硫产物浓度；换句话说，这个过程是一个燃料重整器和脱硫器。该团队将研究扩大催化剂生产规模，以满足客户需求。通过催化剂表征在放大过程中获得的科学知识将促进燃料转化技术的商业化，并可转化为其他沸石放大过程。

Energy transportation, distribution, and use are major problems for military forces. To simplify logistics, the US military has chosen JP-8 as the sole battlefield fuel. While JP-8 is useful in combustion-based generators, the absence of low molecular weight hydrocarbons and the high concentration of sulfur-containing molecules preclude the use of commercial gas appliances and energy-dense portable fuel cells. Several commercially available fuel converters can reform JP-8 into syngas or hydrogen; but process complexity and sulfur intolerance hinder their widespread adoption. Therefore, the current proposal explores a new fuel reformation method that has been developed at the University of South Carolina.The fuel converter accepts a variety of transportation fuels, including JP-8, and produces a mixture of low molecular weight hydrocarbons. In contrast to hydrogen, the products from the process are easy to compress and store and are more versatile for use in solid oxide fuel cells, commercial gas appliances, and combustion generators. The zeolite-based catalyst is the core of the fuel conversion technology; it is resistant to coking, sulfur-poisoning, and active at low conversion temperatures. Two of the strongest attributes of the catalytic process is its sulfur tolerance and low-sulfur product concentration; in other words, the process is a fuel reformer and desulfurizer. The team will research scale-up of the catalyst production in anticipation for customer demand. The scientific knowledge that is gained during scale up through catalyst characterization will facilitate commercialization of the fuel conversion technology and can be translated to other zeolite scale-up processes.