Patent ID: 6926979

Claim:
A fuel cell power system comprising: at least a fuel cell stack, a cooling means, said cooling means removes the waste heat generated within the fuel cell stack, a fuel reformer which reforms a hydrocarbon for the fuel supply to said fuel cell stack, and an energy recovery system, said energy recovery system including a pressure-lowering device which reduces the pressure of the feedstock to the energy recovery system, a heat exchanger which facilitates the heat transfer from said cooling means of the fuel cell stack to said feedstock of the energy recovery system, and a compressor system which raises the pressure of the feedstock to a sufficiently high level and delivers the feedstock to said fuel reformer, thereby a substantially large portion of the waste heat generated by said fuel cell stack is recovered and subsequently used to vaporize said feedstock and the fuel utilization of the fuel cell power system is significantly improved due to a reduced heat input to said fuel reformer, and thereby the size of the waste heat dissipation device and the associated power consumption of said cooling means is substantially reduced.