Miniature vaporizers for use with chemical converters and energy devices

Abstract

A miniature vaporizer for effectively vaporizing a process fluid (e.g., a liquid media) in small energy system applications, such as systems employing chemical reformers and fuel cells. The vaporizer of the present invention can employ a heating medium, such as a hot exhaust generated by a power system, as the heating source for generating steam or for evaporating a fluid (e.g., liquid chemicals or fuels). The vaporizer of the invention can optionally be configured to vaporize water thereby functioning as a miniature steam generator, to evaporate a process fluid thereby functioning as a miniature evaporator or heat exchanger, or to evaporate a process fluid and mix the fluid with another medium. This evaporator / mixer configuration can be used in reformer plants where a liquid chemical or fuel (e.g., gasoline, diesel, methanol, etc.) needs to be first evaporated and mixed with steam prior to the introduction of the resultant mixture to a converter (e.g., reformor or fuel cell).

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a divisional application of U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 095,843 filed Mar. 11, 2002, the contents of which is hereby incorporated by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] Conventionally, steam is generated from a primary heat source or waste heat, which can then be used for various industrial and commercial processes, such as fuel reforming processes, steam generation processes, and a myriad of other activities or processes that require process steam. The large physical size and capacity of commercially available devices for generating steam render them impractical for use in many modern, energy technologies requiring delivery of process steam in a compact and cost efficient manner. [0003] Conventional devices that utilize heat from a waste gas stream to produce steam and / or hot water include heat recovery boilers that may or may not employ auxiliary heat, an example of which is the Donlee Technologies, U.S.A...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006] The present invention is directed to a relatively small or miniature vaporizer, which can be used effectively for vaporizing a process fluid (e.g., a liquid media) in small energy system applications, such as systems employing chemical reformers and fuel cells. The vaporizer of the present invention can employ a heating medium, such as a hot exhaust generated by a power system, as the heating source for generating steam or for evaporating a process fluid (e.g., liquid chemicals or fuels). The vaporizer of the present invention can optionally be configured to vaporize a process fluid thereby functioning as a mini

Problems solved by technology

The large physical size and capacity of commercially available devices for generating steam render them impractical for use in many modern, energy technologies requiring delivery of process steam in a compact and cost efficient manner.

The dry weight of this smallest boiler device typically exceeds one ton.

The large size and extreme weight of this conventional boiler is impractical for use with modern, relatively small fuel reformers and fuel cell systems that can have system sizes not much bigger than state-of-the-art steam generators, which are considerably smaller than the foregoing boilers.

Conventional heat exchangers can provide heated gas or liquid, but are not designed to produce steam for various commercial processes.

A drawback of the heat exchangers described in the foregoing patents is that they do not generate steam effectively.

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