• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1093-1099
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• 2009

Alternative energy sources such as renewable energy like solar power systems, wind power systems, or fuel cell power systems has been the rising issue in the electrical power system. This paper discusses an economic study analysis of fuel cells in the korean electricity market. It includes the basic concept of a fuel cell and the korean electricity market. It also describes the need of renewable energy and how the fuel cell is connected with the local grid. This paper shows the impact of production and recovering thermal energy of a grid-connected fuel cell power system. The profit maximization approach has been structured including electrical power trade with the local grid and heat trade within the micro-grid. The strategies are evaluated using a local load that uses electric and thermal power which has different patterns between summer and winter periods. The solution algorithm is not newly developed one, but is solved by an application called GAMS. Results indicate the need and usefulness of a fuel cell power system.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.364-371
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• 2005

Fuel cell systems(FCS) have a financial and environmental advantage by providing electricity at a high efficiency and useful heat. For use in a residence, a polymer electrolyte fuel cell system(PEFCS) with a battery pack and a hot water storage tank has been modelled and simulated. The system is operated without connection to grid line. Its electric conversion efficiency and heat recovery performance are highly dependent on operation strategies and also on the seasonal thermal and electric load pattern. The output of the fuel cell is controlled stepwise as a function of the state of the battery and/or the storage water tank. In this study various operation strategies for cogeneration fuel cell systems are investigated. Average fuel saving rates at different seasons are calculated to find proper load management strategy. The scheme can be used to determine the optimal operating strategies of PEFCS for residential and building applications.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.289-292
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• 2009

The fabrication method of glass bipolar plates for micro PEM fuel cell application has been established and performance evaluation has been carried out. The advantages of glass bipolar plates for micro PEM fuel cells are light weight, high chemical resistivity, and easy manufacture. The MEMS fabrication process of anisotropic wet etching, thermal & UV bonding along with metal layer deposition has been introduced. From performance evaluation, it was shown that the micro fuel cell with a metal layer deposited on the reactive area yielded higher power density than the one without it. But both power densities of the two cases showed out to be adequate with the current status of micro fuel cell technology.

• Ceramist
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.366-377
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• 2018

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are promising eco-friendly energy conversion system due to their high efficiency, low pollutant emission and fuel flexibility. High operating temperatures, however, leads to the crucial drawbacks such as incompatibility between the components and high thermal stress. Proton-conducting ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs) with proton-conducting oxide (PCO) materials are new types of fuel cells that can solve the problems of conventional SOFCs. Many studies have been proceeded to improve the performance of electrolytes and electrodes, and triple conductive oxides (TCOs) have attracted significant attention as high performance PCFC electrodes.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.313-321
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• 2008

Dynamics of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell is specially important when the system is frequently working on transient conditions. Even though the dynamics of proton exchange membrane fuel cell for residential power generation is less critical than that of PEMFC for transportation application, the system dynamics of PEMFC for RPG can be very important for daily start-up and stop. In particular, thermal management of the PEMFC for RPG is very important because the heat generation from electrochemical reaction is delivered to the home for hot water usages. Additionally, the thermal management is also very important for heat balance of the system and temperature control of the fuel cell. The objective of this study is to develop a dynamic system model for the study of PEMFC performance over various BOP options. Basic simulation results will be presented.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.34-40
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• 2015

A stack in the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) consists of bipolar plates, a membrane electrode assembly, a gas diffusion layer, a collector and end plates. High current density is usually obtainable partially from uniform temperature distribution in the fuel cell. A size optimization method considering the thermal expansion effect of stacked plates was developed on the basis of finite element analyses. The thermal stresses in end, bipolar, and cooling plates were calculated based on temperature distribution obtained from thermal analyses. Finally, the optimization method was applied and optimum thicknesses of the three plates were calculated considering both fastening bolt tension and thermal expansion of each unit cell (72 cells, 5kW). The optimum design considering both thermal and mechanical loads increases the thickness of an end plate by 0.64-0.83% the case considering only mechanical load. The effect can be enlarged if the number of stack increases as in an automotive application to 200-300 stacks.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.2256-2261
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• 2015

In the power plant using high temperature fuel cells such as Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell(MCFC), and Solid Oxide Fuel Cell(SOFC), the generated electric power per area of power generation facilities is much higher than any other renewable energy sources. - High temperature fuel cell systems are capable of operating at MW rated power output. - It also has a feature that is short for length of the line for connecting the interior of the generation facilities. In normal condition, these points are advantages for voltage drops or power losses. However, in abnormal condition such as fault occurrence in electrical system, the fault currents are increased, because of the small impedance of the short length of power cable. Commonly, to minimize the thermal-mechanical stresses on the stack and increase the systems reliability, we divided the power plant configuration to several banks for parallel operation. However, when a fault occurs in the parallel operation system of power main transformer, the fault currents might exceed the interruption capacity of protective devices. In fact, although the internal voltage level of the fuel cell power plant is the voltage level of distribution systems, we should install the circuit breakers for transmission systems due to fault current. To resolve these problems, the SFCL has been studied as one of the noticeable devices. Therefore, we analyzed the effect of application of the SFCL on bus tie in a fuel cell power plants system using PSCAD/EMTDC.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.63-71
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• 2009

In this study, polysulfone which has excellent mechanical and thermal stability with low cost was used for preparing a non-conducting polymer matrix as a reinforced composite membrane for fuel cell application. The membranes were prepared by phase separation method. Polymer concentration and retention time were controlled to investigate the effects on the membrane morphology. The resaltant membranes showed all sponge-like structure independent of polymer concentration. The mechanical and thermal stability were improved with increasing polymer concentration in contrast to the membrane porosity. As a result, the membranes prepared with the retention time for 2 mins using 20 wt% of polymer solution was suitable for a fuel cell compositite membrane providing optimum properties such as approximately 80% of high porosity, 1.3 MPa of tensile strength, and less than 1% of thermal shrinkage both machine and transverse direction.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 2013

In recent years, development of energy conversion systems using hydrogen as an energy source has been accelerated globally. Even though hydrogen is an environment-friendly energy source, safety and effectiveness issues in storage, transportation, and usage of hydrogen should be clearly resolved in every application. Therefore, sensors for detecting hydrogen leakage, especially for fuel cell electric vehicles, should be designed to have much higher resolution and accuracy in comparison with conventional gas sensors. In this study, we conducted to determine the design parameters for the semiconductor hydrogen sensor with optimized sensing conditions under the thermal distribution characteristic and thermal transfer characteristic. The heat generation study on power supply voltage was studied for correlation analysis of thermal energy according to the power supply voltage variation from 1.0 voltage to 10.0 voltage every 0.5 voltage. And we studied for the temperature coefficient of resistance with hydrogen sensor.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.1763-1770
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• 2013

A series of the block copolymers were successfully synthesized from post-sulfonated hydrophilic and hydrophobic macromers via three-step copolymerization. The degrees of sulfonation (DS) of the copolymers (10%, 30%, or 50%) were controlled by changing the molar ratio of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts. The resulting block copolymers were characterized by $^1H$ NMR and other technologies. The membranes were successfully cast using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) solution at $100^{\circ}C$. The copolymers were characterized to confirm chemical structure by $^1H$ NMR and FT-IR. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) demonstrated that all sulfonated block copolymers exhibited good thermal stability with an initial weight loss at temperatures above $240^{\circ}C$. The membranes showed acceptable ion exchange capacity (IEC) and water uptake values in accordance with DS. The maximum proton conductivity was 184 mS $cm^{-1}$ in block copolymer-50 at $60^{\circ}C$ and 100% relative humidity, while the conductivity of Nifion-115 was 160 mS $cm^{-1}$ under the same measurement conditions. AFM images of the block copolymer membranes showed well separated the hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains. From the observed results it is that the prepared block membranes can be considered as suitable polymer electrolyte membranes for the application of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC).