A first generation technical PERMCAT has been successfully operated as part of the CAPER experiment at the Tritium Laboratory Karlsruhe for several years.
The system was successfully operated at temperatures ranging from −20°C to +120°C in non condensing environments.
Hydrogen and air gases are fed into this system, which is successfully operated at 319 °C.
The sealed X-ray tube was successfully operated at 30 KV with an extraction current from the cathode of 307 μA.
The inverter was successfully operated at temperatures from 4.2 K to 33 K, and finite operating margins were observed in this temperature range.
The methanogenic reactor was successfully operated at 20, 15 and 10 days HRT while it failed when an HRT of 5 days was applied.
Moreover, one 1 kW gasoline fuel processor built on a scaled-up catalyst was successfully operated at a (H2+CO) throughput of 0.9 1.0 m3/h for 60 h.
The X-ray source assembly was successfully operated at 2.5, 2.8, 3.7, 4.1, and 4.2 kV, with an extraction current from the cathode of 47, 102, 213, 307, and 423 μA, respectively.
SOFC stacks can be successfully operated at elevated pressure by containment in a pressure vessel and equalization of the vessel pressure to the process pressure (i.e. anode and cathode gas flows).
Although the DMFC stack undergoes a sharp voltage drop and a significant performance decrease at the initial stage of the frozen condition, the self-heating DMFC are successfully operated at −5 and −10 °C in both constant current or constant voltage modes.
