• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.369-376
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• 2017

Temperature and humidity regulations of an open-cathode PEM fuel cell with balance of plant (BOP) are developed in this study. The axial fan, a bubble humidifier, set of solenoid valves and a controller are used to perform temperature and humidity control simultaneously. A fuzzy controller is designed, and it shows its superiority in real-time controlling for strong non-linear dynamical fuel cell system. The axial fan speed is used for temperature control and solenoid valve on/off signal of the bubble humidifier is used for humidity control. The axial fan speed is controlled to keep the fuel cell temperature within the desired point. Meanwhile, the bubble humidifier is utilized to moisture hydrogen to manage the water content of membrane. The results show that the proposed fuzzy controller effectively increases the output power of 10% for a PEM fuel cell.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.359-366
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• 2008

A two-dimensional thermal model of proton exchange membrane fuel cell with large active area is developed to investigate the performance of fuel cell with large active area over various thermal management conditions. The core sub-models of the two-dimensional thermal model are one-dimensional agglomerate structure electrochemical reaction model, one-dimensional water transport model, and a two-dimensional heat transfer model. Prior to carrying out the simulation, this study is contributed to set up the operating temperature of the fuel cell with large active area which is a maximum temperature inside the fuel cell considering durability of membrane electrolyte. The simulation results show that the operating temperature of the fuel cell and temperature distribution inside the fuel cell can affect significantly the total net power at extreme conditions. Results also show that the parasitic losses of balance of plant component should be precisely controlled to produce the maximum system power with minimum parasitic loss of thermal management system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.439-447
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• 2012

Solid oxide fuel cell/gas turbine hybrid systems that use three gas turbines having different power outputs were devised and their performance was compared. The power shares of the gas turbine and fuel cell and the net system efficiency were compared among the three systems, and their variations with the design fuel cell temperature were investigated. The system efficiency was predicted to be insensitive to the fuel cell temperature in the sub-MW system, but it increased with increasing fuel cell temperature in both the multi-MW and hundred-MW systems. The influence of air bypass around the fuel cell on the system performance was also investigated.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.1 no.4 s.4
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• pp.49-54
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• 2005

There is close relation between the heat generation in the fuel cell stack and the fuel performance. In PEM fuel cell vehicles, the stack coolant temperature is about $65^{\circ}C$, which is far lower than that for general automobile engine. Therefore, it is hard to release heat generated in the stack by using a radiator of limited size because of the reduced temperature difference between the coolant and the ambient air. In this study, indirect stack cooling system using $CO_2$ heat pump was designed and its stack cooling performance in releasing heat to the ambient was investigated. This work focuses on a series of processes that grasp the relation among the fuel cell power, the radiator capacity and the stack temperature. The purpose of this work is to find out a way to properly release sufficient amount of heat through the finite sized radiator, so that the slack power generation can not be deteriorated due to the stack temperature increase. The optimization between the compressor power consumption and the fuel cell output power can be carried out to maximize the performance of fuel cell system.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.50-60
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• 2013

High temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) using phosphoric acid (PA) doped polybenzimidazole (PBI) membranes have been concentrated as one of solutions to the limits with traditional low temperature PEMFCs. However, the amount of reported experimental data is not enough to catch the operational characteristics correlated with cell performance and durability. In this study, design of experiments (DOE) based operational optimization method for high temperature PEMFCs has been proposed. Response surface method (RSM) is very useful to effectively analyze target system's characteristics and to optimize operating conditions for a short time. Thus RSM using central composite design (CCD) as one of methodologies for design of experiments (DOE) was adopted. For this work, the statistic models which predict the performance and degradation rate with respect to the operating conditions have been developed. The developed performance and degradation models exhibit a good agreement with experimental data. Compared to the existing arbitrary operation, the expected cell lifetime and average cell performance during whole operation could be improved by optimizing operating conditions. Furthermore, the proposed optimization method could find different new optimal solutions for operating conditions if the target lifetime of the fuel cell system is changed. It is expected that the proposed method is very useful to find optimal operating conditions and enhance performance and durability for many other types of fuel cell systems.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.510-511
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• 2008

Fuel cell is a modular, high efficient and environmentally energy conversion device, it has become a promising option to replace the conventional fossil fuel based electric power plants. The high temperature fuel cell has conspicuous feature and high potential in being used as an energy converter of various fuel to electricity and heat. And, The research and development for the solid oxide fuel cell have been promoted rapidly and extensively in recent years, because of their high efficiency and future potential. Therefore this paper describes the manufacturing method and characteristics of anode electrode for solid oxide fuel cell, by the way, Ni-YSZ materials are used as anode of high temperature widely. So in this experiments, we investigated the optimum content of Ni, by the impedance characteristics, overvoltage. As a result, the performance of Ni-YSZ anode(40vol%) was better excellent than the others.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.460-465
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• 2003

The modeling of PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell system consisting of fuel cell stack and BOP (Balance of Plant) is presented in this paper. The effects of temperature, pressure (air, hydrogen), and humidity on the fuel cell system performance were mainly investigated using thermo-dynamical and electro-chemical equations. To understand the power distribution characteristics of fuel cell system, the effects of operating temperature and air pressure on maximum power and system power were also demonstrated. Through this study, we can get the basic insight into the fuel cell stack and BOP component sizing and it can be used effectively for the optimization of the practical fuel cell systems in purpose.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.1013-1020
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• 2004

The hybrid system of gas turbine and fuel cell is expected to produce electricity more efficiently than conventional methods, especially in small power applications such as distributed generation. The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is currently the most promising fuel cell for the hybrid system. To realize the conceptual advantages resulting from the hybridization of gas turbine and fuel cell, optimized construction of the whole system must be the most important. In this study, parametric design analyses for pressurized GT/SOFC systems have been peformed considering probable practical limiting design factors such as turbine inlet temperature, fuel cell operating temperature, temperature rise in the fuel cell and soon. Analyzed systems include various configurations depending on fuel reforming type and fuel supply method.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.545-548
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• 2005

There is a close relation between the heat generation in the fuel cell stack and the fuel cell performance. In PEM fuel Gell vehicles, the stack coolant temperature is about $65^{\circ}C$, which is far lower than that for general automobile engine. Therefore, it is hard to release heat generated in the stack by using a radiator of limited size because of the reduced temperature difference between the coolant and the ambient air. In this study, indirect stack cooling system using $CO_2$ heat pump was designed and its stack cooling performance in releasing heat to the ambient was investigated. This work focuses on a series of processes that grasp the relation among the fuel cell power, the radiator capacity and the stack temperature. The purpose of this work is to find out a way to properly release sufficient amount of heat through the finite sized radiator, so that the stack power general ion can not be deteriorated due to the stack temperature increase. The optimization between the compressor power consumption and the fuel cel1 output power can be carried out to maximize the performance of fuel cell system.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.442-449
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• 2018

Research on High temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell (HT-PEMFC) has actively been conducted all over the world. Since the HT-PEMFC can be operated at a high temperature of $120-180^{\circ}C$ using phosphoric acid-doped polybenzimidazole (PBI) electrolyte membrane, it has considerable advantages over conventional PEMFC in terms of operating conditions and system efficiency. However, If the thermal distribution is not uniform in the stack unit, degradation due to local reaction and deterioration of lifetime are difficult to prevent. The thin plate separator reduces the volume of the fuel cell stack and improves heat transfer, consequently, enhancing the cooling effect. In this paper, a large area flow field of thin plate separator for HT-PEMFC is designed and sub-stack is fabricated. We have studied stack performance evaluation under various operating conditions and it has been verified that the proposed design can achieve acceptable stack performance at a wide operating range.