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

University Of South Carolina At Columbia, Columbia SC

Investigators

Abstract

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.