Fully internal manifolded and internal reformed fuel cell stack

Claim 1

In a generally rectangular fuel cell stack comprising a plurality of fuel cell units, each said fuel cell unit comprising an anode and a cathode, an electrolyte in contact with one face of said anode and an electrolyte in contact with an opposite facing face of said cathode, and a separator plate separating said cell unit between said anode and cathode forming an anode chamber between one face of said separator plate and said anode and a cathode chamber between the opposite face of said separator plate and said cathode, said anode chamber in gas communication with fuel gas supply and outlet and said cathode chamber in gas communication with oxidant gas supply and outlet the improvement comprising; said electrolytes and said separator plates extending to the edge of said fuel cell stack, said separator plates having a flattened peripheral wet seal structure extending to contact said electrolytes on each face of said separator plates completely around their periphery forming a separator plate/electrolyte wet seal under cell operating conditions, said electrolytes and said separator plates each having a plurality of aligned perforations said perforations in said separator plates being surrounded by a flattened manifold wet seal structure extending to contact said electrolyte on each face of said separator plate forming a separator plate/electrolyte wet seal under cell operating conditions to form a plurality of gas manifolds extending through said cell stack, conduits through said extended manifold wet seal structure providing fuel gas communication between one set of said manifolds and said anode chambers on one face of said separator plates and conduits through said extended manifold wet seal structure providing oxidant gas communication between a second set of said manifolds and said cathode chambers on the other face of said separator plates, thereby providing fully internal manifolding of fuel and oxidant gases to and from each said unit fuel cell in said fuel cell stack, said fuel cell stack having interspersed along its axis a plurality of reforming chambers each formed by two separator/reformer plates, one having the configuration of said one face of said separator plate facing one of said anode chambers and the second having the configuration of said other face of said separator plate facing one of said cathode chambers, said two separator/reformer plates sealingly joined in their edge area to enclose a reformer chamber, conduits through said extended manifold wet seal structure providing reaction gas and steam communication from a third set of said manifolds to said reformer chamber, and conduits through said extended manifold wet seal structure providing enriched hydrogen product gas communication to a fuel gas supply manifold, thereby providing fully internal manifolding of reactant gas and steam to and product gas from each said reformer unit in said fuel cell stack.