• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.215-218
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• 2002

본 연구는 휴대 전자기기용 전원으로 사용 가능한 직접 메탄올 연료전지(Direct Methanol Fuel Cell)의 조건에 따른 성능 특성에 관하여 연구를 하였다. 메탄올은 사용함에 안전할 뿐 아니라 에너지 밀도 또한 월등함으로 DMFC를 통해 전기에너지로 변환시킬 경우 휴대용 기기의 전원으로 사용함에 있어서 기존의 베터리를 대체할 가능성이 있는 에너지원으로 연구되어지고 있다.(중략)

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2008

The key component of a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is the membrane electrode assembly (MEA), which comprises a polymer electrolyte membrane and catalyst layers (anode and cathode electrode). Generally the catalyst layer is coated on the porous electrode supporter (e.g. carbon paper or cloth) using various coating methods such as brushing, decal transfer, spray coating and screen printing methods. However, these methods were disadvantageous in terms of the uniformity of catalyst layer thickness, catalyst loss, and coating time. In this work, we used bar-coating method which can prepare the catalyst layer with uniform thickness for MEA of DMFC. The surface and cross-section morphologies of the catalyst layers were observed by SEM. The performances and resistance of the MEAs were investigated through a single cell evaluation and impedance analyzer.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.205-208
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• 2001

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.858-861
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• 2006

In this paper, a study on the noise reduction in a mobile fuel cell system is presented. Among various fuel cell systems around 20W capacities designed for mobile electronic devices, the active direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) systems have been recently developed. In such systems, the primary noise source is the air pump which provides sufficient air flow ($5{\sim}6$ liter/min) for electrochemical reaction with methanol fuel while the noise contributions from other auxiliary parts are relatively small. Especially, the discrete noise tones generated by the air pump are dominant and those frequency peaks related to the rotor harmonics are needed to be suppressed by a silencer. Therefore. the Herschel/Quinke (HQ) tubes, which use the out-of-phase cancellation of acoustic waves propagating through direct and indirect pathways, are applied to the inlet of the air pump. Performance of noise reduction with HQ silencer is analytically estimated by calculating the transmission. The length and number of thin HQ tubes are optimized to decrease the radiated noise. As a result, the sound pressure level could be successfully reduced by about 10 dB after applying three serially connected HQ tubes.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.375-381
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• 2021

Chitosan powder is synthesized by a deasetylation process of chitin, obtained from processing of dried shrimp shell powder. Subsequently, chitosan (CS) membranes filled by montmorillonite (MMT) particles and phosphotungstic acid are prepared, and characterized by FT-IR and SEM. The morphology, obtained by SEM for the composite membrane, showed that MMT filler is successfully incorporated and relatively well dispersed in the chitosan polymer matrix. Water and methanol uptake for the CS/MMT composite membranes decrease with increasing MMT loadings, but IEC value increases. In all prepared CS/MMT composite membranes, the CS membrane filled by 5 wt% MMT particles exhibits the best proton conductivity, while that with 10 wt% MMT loading exhibits the lowest methanol permeability; these values are 2.67 mS·cm^-1 and 3.40 × 10^-7 cm²·s^-1, respectively. The best membrane selectivity is shown in the CS/MMT10 composite membrane; this shows that 10 wt% filled MMT is the optimum loading to improve the performance of the chitosan composite membrane. These characteristics make the developed chitosan composite membranes a promising electrolyte for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) application.

• Clean Technology
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.293-299
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• 2007

Direct coating of catalyst layer on the $Nafion^{(R)}$ membrane has been optimized in the process of fabrication of membrane electrode assembly (MEA) to enhance the performance of direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). In this method, the contact resistance at the interface of the catalyst layer and the membrane was found to be low. The effect of catalyst loading, thickness of membrane and the gas diffusion layer (GDL) with or without the presence of micro-porous layer (MPL) on the performance of the MEA was also investigated. The MEA fabricated by the above-mentioned method exhibited a performance of $147\;mW/cm^2$ and $100\;mW/cm^2$ at $80^{\circ}C$ and $60^{\circ}C$, respectively, with the catalysts loading of $4\;mg/cm^2$.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.49-53
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• 2007

The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is a promising power source for portable applications due to many advantages such as simple construction, compact design, high energy density, and relatively high energy-conversion efficiency. In this work, an electrochemical methanol sensor for monitoring the methanol concentration in direct methanol fuel cells was fabricated using a thin composite nafion membrane as the electrolyte. We have analyzed the I-V characteristic of the fabricated methanol sensor as a function of methanol concentration, catalyst electrode and platinum(Pt) thickness. The fabricated sensor was analyzed by I-V measurement with various methanol concentration. When we measured the sensor characteristics with 10nm Pt and at 1V, the current value was $1.30{\times}10^{-6}A,\;1.96{\times}10^{-6}A\;and\;2.80{\times}10^{-6} A$ for three methanol concentration of 1M, 2M and 3M, respectively. When the methanol concentration was fixed at 2M, the current value of the fabricated device with Pt layers of 5, 10 and 15 nm thickness was $3.06{\times}10^{-6}A,\;1.96{\times}10^{-6}A\;and\;1.00{\times}10^{-6}A$, respectively. These results lead us to the conclusion that when the methanol concentration increases, the output current increases and when the catalyst electrode become thinner, the current increase more. It showed that, the thinner the catalyst electrode, the more electrochemistry become activation.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2004.05b
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• pp.1-8
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• 2004

Ion-conducting polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) have recently used in developing fuel cell or solar cell for portable, mobile and residential applications [1]. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), alkaline electrolyte fuel cell (AFC) and dye-sensitized solar cell have been employing the ion-conducting PEMs to complete their electrical circuits to produce electricity.(omitted)

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.41-46
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• 2007

Dynamic behavior of immiscible gas bubble attached to the wall in channel flow plays very important role in many engineering applications. Special attention has been paid to micro direct methanol fuel cell(${\mu}$DMFC) where surface tension becomes dominant factor with minor gravitational effect due to its reduced size. Therefore, displacement of $CO_2$ bubble generating on a cathode side in ${\mu}$DMFC can be very difficult and efficient removal of $CO_2$ bubbles will affect the overall machine performance considerably. We have focused our efforts on studying the dynamic behavior of immiscible bubble attached to the one side of the wall on 2D rectangular channel subject to external shear flow. We used Level Contour Reconstruction Method(LCRM) which is the simplified version of front tracking method to track the bubble interface motion. Effects of Reynolds number, Weber number, advancing/receding contact angle and property ratio on bubble detachment characteristic has been numerically identified.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1433-1438
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• 2007

Characteristics of a phase change type micro actuator have been studied. The micro actuator has been designed for a micro-pump in an active direct methanol fuel cell(DMFC), consisting of an actuating chamber, a membrane, an electric heater, and a sensor of resistance temperature detector (RTD). In the present study, researches have been focused on the response of the actuator to control algorithm of the heater. The experiments demonstrated that the displacement of the membrane increase with temperature variation which is a function of applied voltage, duty ratio, and operating frequency of heating. The results also showed that operation of the actuator with high voltage at small duty of heating is more efficient than the same power consumption of heating with low voltage at large duty.