Effective Sulfur Control for Fuel Cells: FCE Experience

Most of the fuel cell systems are designed to operate on commonly available gaseous hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas, propane and anaerobic digester gas. These fuels contain a myriad of sulfur compounds, some present as contaminants from the source and others added as odorant for notification of a gas leak. Sulfur is a known poison for the fuel cell anodes and reforming catalysts. Therefore, the sulfur compounds present in the fuel are required to be removed prior to entering the fuel cell system. FuelCell Energy has developed an ambient-temperature sulfur removal system with high sulfur capacity for fuel cell applications. The attractive features of the design are simplicity, small size, and long life resulting in a low-cost and compact sulfur control solution. The system has been proven on natural gas, liquefied natural gas, propane and ADG. The FCE system performance with different types of fuels (NG, LNG, and propane) will be discussed in this paper.