variavel0=<b>Ennio Peres da Silva</b> - lh2ennio@ifi.unicamp.br Universidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Flavio Maron Vichi</b> - fmvichi@iq.usp.br Universidade de São Paulo
<b>João Carlos Camargo</b> - joaoc@fem.unicamp.br Universidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Carla Kazue Nakao Cavaliero</b> - cavaliero@alpha.hydra.com.br Universidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Iaponira Rando Carolino</b> - yaponira@hotmail.com Universidade Estadual de Campinas
<b>Abstract.</b> New perspectives for ethanol utilization have been recently opened with the development of fuel cell technologies for commercial purposes. Fuel cells have emerged as one of the most innovative technologies to produce electricity with high efficiency and low environmental impact. In stationary or vehicular applications, the transition from the traditional systems to fuel cell systems will probably happen through the utilization of hydrogen obtained from water electrolyses or through some liquid fuel, such as ethanol, methanol, gasoline, etc, which will be reformed to produce hydrogen. As such, ethanol is a natural candidate for providing hydrogen to the fuel cell In this paper we report the energy balance of an ethanol reforming system, with estimates of the overall efficiency of the reformer/fuel cell assembly. The thermal energy that must be supplied or taken from different stages of the process is taken into account. With respect to system cost, it is important that a high efficiency be achieved in order to compensate for the higher cost of the reformer/fuel cell assembly.
<b>Keywords.</b> Ethanol reform, fuel cells, thermodynamics efficiency.