The Hydrogen Supply

Rather than transporting and storing, produce on-site where needed

Hydrogen is not suited to transportation in gas tanks and storage is also not easy at the current time.
However, there are several methods of producing hydrogen from fossil resources such as natural gas or naphtha, for example steam reforming ⁽¹⁾, partial oxidation ⁽²⁾ and auto-thermal reforming ⁽³⁾. Among these, steam reforming of natural gas is a widely used method of extracting hydrogen by a process in which natural gas and steam are caused to react in a reactor vessel filled with a catalyst.

With city gas (methane (CH4)) as fuel, if the production of hydrogen can be carried out by "reforming" in fuel cells, the existing city gas infrastructure can be applied, and there is also no need for the transport and storage of hydrogen, a gas which is hard to handle. Therefore, a reforming device has been installed in the household fuel cells, and city gas is used as fuel.

Moreover, when hydrogen is extracted using the steam reforming method, because the reforming is carried out from fossil resources that contain carbon, carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) are created. Carbon monoxide (CO) has an adverse effect on the chemical reaction of the fuel cells, so it is converted to carbon dioxide (CO2), for example, by a degeneration reaction by adding water or a purification reaction by adding oxygen.