• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.465-477
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• 2023

In proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), proper thermal management of the stack and moisture generation by electrochemical reactions significantly affect fuel cell performance. In this study, the PEMFC dynamic characteristic model was developed through Simcenter AMESim, a development program. In addition, the developed model aims to understand the thermal resin balance of the stack and performance characteristics for input loads. The developed model applies the thermal management model of the stack and the moisture content and permeability model to simulate voltage loss and stack thermal behavior precisely. This study extended the C based AMESet (adaptive modeling environment submodeling tool) to simulate electrochemical reactions inside the stack. Fuel cell model of AMESet was liberalized with AMESim and then integrated with the balance of plant (BOP) model and analyzed. And It is intended to be used in component design through BOP analysis. The resistance loss of the stack and thermal behavior characteristics were predicted, and the impact of stack performance and efficiency was evaluated.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.386-392
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• 2013

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stacks are constructed by stacking several to hundreds of unit cells depending on their power outputs required. Fuel and oxidant are distributed to each cell of a stack through so-called manifolds during its operation. In designing a stack, if the manifold sizes are too small, the fuel and oxidant would be maldistributed among the cells. On the contrary, the volume of the stack would be too large if the manifolds are oversized. In this study, we present a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with a geometrically simplified flow-field to optimize the size of the manifolds of a stack. The flow-field of the stack was simplified as a straight channel filled with porous media to reduce the number of computational meshes required for CFD simulations. Using the CFD model, we determined the size of the oxidant manifold of a 30 kW-class PEM fuel cell stack that comprises 99 cells. The stack with the optimal manifold size showed a quite uniform distribution of the cell voltages across the entire cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society For Composite Materials Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.175-178
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• 2003

Mechanical behavior of a fuel stack was studied by the orthotropic material model. The fuel stack is mainly composed of bipolar plate (BP), gasket, end plate, membrane electrolyte assembly (MEA), and gas diffusion layer (GDL). Each component is fastened with a suitable pressure. It is very important to maintain a suitable contact pressure of BP, because it affects the efficiency of the fuel cell. This study compared mechanical behavior of various fastening types of the fuel cell stack. Bar, band, and modified band fastening type are used. The band fastening type showed that it reduces total volume of the cell, but it does not improve the contact pressure distribution of each BP. The modified band fastening type was designed by considering the deformations of band fastening type, and it showed a good enhancement of contact pressure distribution.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.202-210
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• 2011

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell is one of the popular renewable energy sources and widely used in commercial medium power areas from portable electronic devices to electric vehicles. In addition, the increased integration of the PEM fuel cell with power electronics, dynamic loads, and control systems requires accurate electrical models and simulation methods to emulate their electrical behaviors. Advancement in parallel computation techniques, various real-time simulation tools, and smart power hardware have allowed the prototyping of novel apparatus to be investigated in a virtual system under a wide range of realistic conditions repeatedly, safely, and economically. This paper builds up advancements of optimized model constructions for a fuel cell stack system on a real-time simulator in the view points of improving dynamic model accuracy and boosting computation speed. In addition, several considerations for a power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulation are provided to electrically emulate the PEM fuel cell stack system with power facilities. The effectiveness of the proposed PHIL simulation method developed on Opal RT's RT-Lab Matlab/Simulink based real-time engineering simulator and a programmable power supply is verified using experimental results of the proposed PHIL simulation system with a Ballard Nexa fuel cell stack.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.374-380
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• 2015

In this paper, a dynamic model describing the 2 phase effect on the gas diffusion layer depending on load change of a fuel cell stack was developed to examine the effects of liquid water in fuel cell cathode gas diffusion layer on the fuel cell performance. For the developed model, 2 phase effect on the performance of a fuel cell stack depending on the load changes, concentration distribution of water vapor and oxygen inside a gas diffusion layer, the effect of the thickness and porosity of the gas diffusion layer on the fuel cell stack voltage were examined. As a result, a fuel cell stack voltage for the 2 phase model within the scope of the research become lower than that for the 1 phase model regardless of the load. Although oxygen molar concentration for the gas diffusion layer adjacent to the catalyst layer was the lowest, water vapor concentration is the highest. In addition, as thickness and porosity of the gas diffusion layer increased and decreased, respectively, the fuel cell stack voltage decreased.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.358-368
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• 2023

The fuel cell market is expected to grow rapidly. Therefore, it is necessary to scale up fuel cells for buildings, power generation, and ships. A multi-stack system can be an effective way to expand the capacity of a fuel cell. Multi-stack fuel cell systems are better than single-stack systems in terms of efficiency, reliability, durability and maintenance. In this research, we developed a residential fuel cell stack and system model that generates electricity using the fuel cell-photovoltaic hybrid system. The efficiency and hydrogen consumption of the fuel cell system were calculated according to the three proposed power distribution methods (equivalent, Daisy-chain, and optimal method). As a result, the optimal power distribution method increases the efficiency of the fuel cell system and reduces hydrogen consumption. The more frequently the multi-stack fuel cell system is exposed to lower power levels, the greater the effectiveness of the optimal power distribution method.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.121-128
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• 2024

In this study, a dynamic simulation model of a heavy-duty truck, equipped with a fuel cell power-train, has been developed and the dynamic behavior of the fuel cell stack has bee investigated using. Output change simulations were performed according to several drive cycle load change of a fuel cell truck. Mathworks' Simulink and Simscape program were used to develop the model. The model is comprised of fuel cell power train, power converter system and truck vehicle part. The vehicle runs at targeted speed of the truck, which is set as the load of the system. The dynamic behavior of the fuel cell stack according to the weight difference were analyzed, and based on this, the dynamic characteristics of the fuel cell output power and battery state with simple load was analyzed.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.197-204
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• 2008

DMFC(Direct Methanol Fuel Cell) is one of promising candidates for power sources of small mobile IT devices like notebook, cell phone, and so on. Efficient operation of fuel cell system is very important for long-sustained power supply because of limited fuel tank size. It is necessary to investigate operation characteristics of fuel cell stack for optimal control of DMFC system. The generated voltage was modeled according to various operating condition; methanol concentration, stack temperature, and load current. It is inevitable for methanol solution at anode to cross over to cathode through MEA(membrane electrode assembly), which reduces the system efficiency and increases fuel consumption. In this study, optimal operation conditions are proposed by analyzing stack performance model, cross-over phenomenon, and system efficiency.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.236-246
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• 2003

This paper focuses on developing a model of a PEM fuel cell stack and to integrate it with realistic model of the air supply system for fuel cell vehicle application. The fuel cell system model is realistically and accurately simulated air supply operation and its effect on the system power and efficiency using simulation tool Matlab/Simulink. The Peak performance found at a pressure ratio of 3, and it give a 15mV increase per cell. The limit imposed is a minimum SR(Stoichiometric Ratio) of 2 at low fuel cell load and 2.5 at high fuel cell load.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.1 no.4 s.4
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• pp.43-48
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• 2005

This study presents the integrated modeling approach to simulate the proton exchange membrane [PEM] fuel cell system for vehicle application. The fuel cell system consisting of stack and balance of plant (BOP) was simulated with MATLAB/Simulink environment to estimate the maximum system power and investigate the effect of BOP component sizing on system performance and efficiency. The PEM fuel cell stack model was established by using a semi-empirical modeling. To maximize the net efficiency of fuel cell system, multi-variable optimization code was adopted. Using this method, the optimized operating values were obtained according to various system net power levels. The fuel cell model established was co-linked to AVL CRUISE, a vehicle simulation package. Through the vehicle simulation software, the fuel economy of fuel cell powered electric vehicle for two types of driving cycles was presented and compared. It is expected that this study can be effectively employed in the basic BOP component sizing and in establishing system operation map with respect to net power level of fuel cell system.