• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.119-126
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• 2007

Because of the low temperature operation, proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell has a water phase transition. Therefore, water management is an important operation issue in a PEM fuel cell because the liquid water in the fuel cell causes electrode flooding that can lower the cell performance under high current density conditions. In this study, in order to understand the reactant distributions in the cathode channels of the PEM fuel cell, an experimental technique that can measure the species concentrations of reactant gases by using gas chromatograph (GC) is applied for an operating PEM fuel cell. The oxygen distribution along the cathode flow channels of PEM fuel cell is mainly investigated with various operating conditions. Also, the relations between cathode flooding and oxygen concentrations and oxygen consumption pattern along the cathode channel configurations of the unit cell adopted for this study are discussed using GC measurement and visualization experiment of cathode flooding. It is found that the amount of oxygen consumption is very sensitive to various operating conditions of the fuel cell and was much affected by the flooding occurrence in cathode channels.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.462-471
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• 2022

In this study, the electrochemical impedance characteristics of CO₂/H₂O co-reduction to produce CO/H₂ syngas were investigated in a low-temperature single cell. The effect of the operating conditions on the single-cell performance was evaluated at different feed concentrations and cell voltages, and the corresponding electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) data were collected and analyzed. The Nyquist plots exhibited two semicircles with separated characteristic frequencies of approximately 1 kHz and tens of Hz. The high-frequency semicircles, which depend only on the catholyte concentration, could be correlated to the charge transfer processes in competitive CO₂ reduction and hydrogen evolution reactions at the cathodes. The EIS characteristics of the CO₂/H₂O co-reduction single cell could be explained by the equivalent circuit suggested in this study. In this circuit, the cathodic mass transfer and anodic charge transfer processes are collectively represented by a parallel combination of resistance and a constant phase element to show low-frequency semicircles. Through nonlinear fitting using the equivalent circuit, the parameters for each electrochemical element, such as polarization resistances for high- and low-frequency processes, could be quantified as functions of feed concentration and cell voltage.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.505-511
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• 2015

Solid oxide fuel cell operate at high temperature ($800{\sim}1000^{\circ}C$). High temperature have an advantage of system efficiency, but a weak durability. In this study, linear state space controller is designed to handle the temperature of solid oxide fuel cell system for proper thermal management. System model is developed under simulink environment with Thermolib$^{(R)}$. Since the thermally optimal system integration improves efficiency, very complicated thermal integration approach is selected for system integration. It shows that temperature response of fuel cell stack and catalytic burner are operated at severe non-linearity. To control non-linear temperature response of SOFC system, gain scheduled linear quadratic regulator is designed. Results shows that the temperature response of stack and catalytic burner follows the command over whole ranges of operations.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.254-261
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• 2002

The fabrication method for the main components of the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stack such as electrodes, membrane-electrode assemblies, and bipolar plates was established for the effective electrode area of 240 ㎠. A counter-flow type 100-cell stack was fabricated by using the above components and then a maximum power of 7.44 kW for H$_2$/O$_2$ and 5.56 kW for H$_2$/air could be obtained at 70$\^{C}$ and 1 atm. It was seen that the distribution of the OCV for unit cells in the stack was uniform but the voltage deviation increased as the load increased due to the IR drop and the electrode polarization. The stack was applied to the power source of the fuel cell/battery hybrid electric golf car. It produced about 1 kW at a room temperature operation during the test run, which occupied about 43% of the total power required by the 2.3 kW motor.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.283-289
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• 2010

A two-dimensional isothermal model has been employed for numerical simulations of a high temperature hydrogen fuel cell with proton exchange membrane. The model is validated with existing experimental data and used for examination on the effects of various operating conditions on the fuel cell performance. The present numerical results show that the cell performance increases with increasing exchange current density, ion conductivity of the membrane, inlet gas flow rate as well as operating pressure. Also, higher porosity of gas diffusion layer (GDL) results in higher cell performance due to enhancement of the diffusion through the GDL, where the cathode GDL porosity more influences on the performance as compared with the anode one.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.12 no.9
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• pp.691-695
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• 2002

A low temperature anode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cell was developed. The anode-supported tube was fabricated using extrusion process. Then the electrolyte layer and the cathode layer were coated onto the anode tube by slurry dipping process, subsequently. The anode tube and electrolyte were co-fired at $140^{\circ}C$, and the cathode was sintered at $1200^{\circ}C$. The thickness and gas permeability of the electrolyte depended on the number of coating and the slurry concentration. Anode-supported tube was satisfied with SOFC requirements, related to electrical conductivity, pore structure, and gas diffusion limitations. At operating temperature of $800^{\circ}C$, open circuit voltage of the cell with gastight and dense electrolyte layer was 1.1 V and the cell showed a good performance of 450 mW/$\textrm{cm}^2$.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.73-81
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• 2014

This paper describes the continuous flow operation of membraneless sodium perborate fuel cell using acid/alkaline bipolar electrolyte. Here, hydrazine is used as a fuel and sodium perborate is used as an oxidant under Alkaline-acid media configuration. Sodium perborate affords hydrogen peroxide in aqueous medium. In our operation, the laminar flow based microfluidic membranleless fuel cell achieved a maximum power density of $27.2mW\;cm^{-2}$ when using alkaline hydrazine as the anolyte and acidic perborate as the catholyte at room temperature with a fuel mixture flow rate of $0.3mL\;min^{-1}$. The simple planar structured membraneless sodium perborate fuel cell enables high design flexibility and easy integration of the microscale fuel cell into actual microfluidic systems and portable power applications.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.368-373
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• 2004

To improve the conventional cathode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) from the viewpoint of low cell power density, expensive fabrication process and high operation temperature, the anode-supported tubular solid oxide fuel cell was investigated. The anode tube of Ni-8mol% $Y_2$O$_3$-stabilized $ZrO_2$ (8YSZ) was manufactured by extrusion process, and, the electrolyte of 8YSZ and the multi-layered cathode of $LaSrMnO_3$(LSM)ILSM-YSZ composite/$LaSrCoFeO_3$ were coated on the surface of the anode tube by slurry dip coating process, subsequently. Their cell performances were examined under gases of humidified hydrogen with 3% water and air. In the thermal cycle condition of heating and cooling rates with $3.33^{\circ}C$/min, the anode-supported tubular cell showed an excellent resistance as compared with the electrolyte-supported planar cell. The optimum hydrogen flow rate was evaluated and the air preheating increased the cell performance due to the increased gas temperature inside the cell. In long-term stability test, the single cell indicated a stable performance of 300 mA/$\textrm{cm}^2$ at 0.85 V for 255 hr.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.419-424
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• 2014

Direct ethanol fuel cell has been fabricated with ceramic membrane. A porous silicon carbide (SiC) membrane having approximately 30% porosity has been applied for a direct ethanol proton exchange membrane (DE-PEM) fuel cell. A horizontal type cell having Pt ($18mg/cm^2$) catalyst layer on both side of the ceramic membrane was used for the demonstration test. The ethanol oxidation based-fuel cell stack showed very high voltage (1.289V) and measurable current level (68mA) even though at room temperature.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.963-972
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• 2003

Performance characteristics of the planar-type solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) are investigated by the analysis of flow fields coupled with heat and mass transfer phenomena in anode and cathode channels. For these purposes, performance analysis of the SOFC is conducted based on electrochemical reaction phenomena in electrodes and electrolyte coupled with flow fields in anode and cathode channels. In the present study, the isothermal model adopted in the previous paper prepared by the same authors is extended to the non-isothermal model by solving energy equation additionally with momentum and mass transfer equations using CFD technique. It is found that the difference between isothermal and non-isothermal models come from non-uniform temperature distribution along anode and cathode electrodes by solving energy equation in non-isothermal model. Non-uniform temperature distribution in non-isothermal model contributes to the increase of average temperature of the fuel cell and influences its performance characteristics.