• Composites Research
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.121-126
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• 2022

Owing to advantages of polymeric materials for hydrogen tank liner like light-weight property and high specific strength, polymer based composites have gained much attention. Despite of many benefits, polymeric materials for fuel cell tank cause problems which is critical to applications as low gas barrier property, and poor processability when adding fillers. For these reasons, improving gas barrier property of polymer composites is required to study for expanding application fields. This work presents impermeable polymer nanocomposites by introducing thin barrier coating using layer by layer (LBL) deposition method. Also, bi-layered and quad-layered nanocomposites were fabricated and compared for identifying relationship between deposition step and gas barrier property. Reduction in gas permeability was observed without interrupting mechanical property and processability. It is discussed that proper coating conditions were suggested when different coating materials and deposition steps were applied. We investigated morphology, gas barrier property and mechanical properties of fabricated nanocomposites by FE-SEM, Oxygen permeation analyzer, UTM, respectively. In addition, we revealed the mechanism of barrier performance of LBL coating using materials which have high aspect ratio.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.157-166
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• 2017

The Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle(FCEV) is recently evolving into a new trend in the automobile industry due to its relatively higher efficiency and zero greenhouse gas(GHG) emission in the tailpipe, as compared to that of the conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. However, it is important to analyze the whole process of the hydrogen's life cycle(from extraction of feedstock to vehicle operation) in order to evaluate the environmental impact of introducing FCEV upon recognizing that the hydrogen fuel, which is used in the fuel cell stack, is not directly available from nature, but instead, it should be produced from naturally available resources. Among the various hydrogen production methods, ${\sim}54.1%^{8)}$ of marketed hydrogen in Korea is produced from naphtha cracking process in the petrochemical industry. Therefore, in this study, we performed a well-to-wheels(WTW) analysis on the hydrogen fuel cycle for the FCEV application by using the GREET program from the US Argonne National Laboratory with Korean specific data. As a result, the well-to-tank and well-to-wheel GHG emissions of the FCEV are calculated as 45,638-51,472 g $CO_2eq/GJ$ and 65.0-73.4 g $CO_2eq/km$, respectively

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.23-32
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• 2020

It is not easy to fully fuel high pressure(70 MPa) hydrogen in a hydrogen vehicle tank quickly. This is because the temperature inside the tank rises rapidly due to heat caused by the Joule-Thomson effect, etc. So fueling protocols such as SAE J2601 in the U.S. and JPEC-S 0003 in Japan appeared. However, there is a problem with these protocols that a number assumption are introduced and the content is too complex and limited in scope. This study was conducted to develop a new protocol based on complete real-time communication. In this study, the hydrogen fueling simulation program were used to examine how the pressure ramp rate affects the temperature and pressure rise in the tank and the fueling flow rate. The results confirmed that the first parameter to be considered in determining the pressure ramp rate is the temperature of the tank.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.411-417
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• 2019

An adsorption chiller is connected to the fuel processing/fuel cell system to increase the energy efficiency of the system. Since, the minimum temperature of $70^{\circ}C$ is needed to operate the adsorption chiller, HT-PEMFC is used as a heating source and $80^{\circ}C$ hot water in the water tank at the system is supplied to the chiller. Experimentally measured COP of the adsorption chiller was between 0.4-0.5 and the total calcuated efficiency of the connected system was between 60% and 70% comparing to 47% without adsorption chilling system.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.123-133
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• 2023

Commercial hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are charged by compressing gaseous hydrogen to high pressure and storing it in a storage tank in the vehicle. This process causes the temperature of the gas to rise, to ensure the safety to storage tanks, the temperature is limited. Therefore, a heat transfer model is needed to explain this temperature rise. The heat transfer model includes the convective heat transfer phenomenon, and accurate estimation is required. In this study, the convective heat transfer coefficient in the hydrogen fueling process was calculated and compared using various correlation equations considering physical phenomena. The hydrogen fueling process was classified into the fueling line from the dispenser to the tank inlet and the storage tank in the vehicle, and the convective heat transfer coefficients were estimated according to process parameters such as mass flow rate, diameter, temperature and pressure. As a result, in the case of the inside of the filling line, the convective heat transfer coefficient was about 1000 times larger than that of the inside of the storage tank, and in the case of the outside of the filling line, the convective heat transfer coefficient was about 3 times larger than that of the outside of the storage tank. Finally, as a result of a comprehensive analysis of convective heat transfer coefficients in each process, it was found that outside the storage tank was lowest in the entire hydrogen fueling process, thus dominated the heat transfer phenomenon.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.35-39
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• 2011

The purpose of this paper is to analyze affecting ratios of strength safety in carbon fiber layer thickness of a composite fuel tank for FEV vehicles. To investigate affecting ratios by FEM modeling, the equivalent von Mises stress has been computed on the aluminum liner and carbon fiber layers of composite fuel tanks in hoop and helical directions respectively. According to the FEM results, the affecting ratios of an aluminum liner on the equivalent stress are 77.5% in hoop direction, 18.11% in $70^{\circ}C$ winded helical direction and 4.39% in $12^{\circ}C$ winded helical direction. These trends on the strength safety of carbon fiber layers have been shown as those of an aluminum liner even though the layer thickness ratio of $12^{\circ}C$ inclined carbon fiber is very high of 42% compared with that of hoop layer thickness. Thus, the computed results show that the strength safety of a carbon fiber fuel tank is more influenced by the winding angle rather than the fiber thickness of carbon fiber layers.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.342-349
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• 2023

In this study, a numerical simulations were conducted to analyze the phase change behavior of a liquid hydrogen storage container. The effects of gravity direction and hydrogen filling rate on boil-off gas (BOG) in the storage container were investigated. The study employed the volume of fluid, which is the phase change analysis model provided by ANSYS Fluent (ANSYS, Canonsburg, PA, USA), to investigate the sloshing phenomenon inside the liquefied hydrogen fuel tank. Considering the transient analysis time, two-dimensional simulation were carried out to examine the characteristics of the flow and thermal fields. The results indicated that the thermal flow characteristics and BOG phenomena inside the two-dimensional liquefied hydrogen storage container were significantly influenced by changes in gravity direction and hydrogen filling rate.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.163-169
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• 2019

This study is a research to compare efficiency of new cooling system (chiller, pre-cooler) to that of the conventional system at the hydrogen refueling station (HRS). This study includes contents for thermodynamic comparison of cooling system for HRS and comparison of pros and cons of its components. So It is to establish design concept of cooling system of HRS supplying with fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV). HRS is charging high pressure H2 (700 bar) to FCEV. However cooling system is need to prevent temperature rise in tank. This cooling system consists of pre-cooler and chiller system.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.642-650
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• 2016

One of the most feasible solution for reducing the excessive energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission is usage of more efficient fuel such as hydrogen. As is well known, there are three viable technologies for storing hydrogen fuel: compressed gas, metal hydride absorption, and cryogenic liquid. In these technologies, the storage for liquid hydrogen has better energy density by weight than other storage methods. However, the cryogenic liquid storage has a significant disadvantage of boiling losses. That is, high performance of thermal insulation systems must be studied for reducing the boiling losses. This paper presents an experimental study on the effective thermal conductivities of the composite layered insulation with aerogel blankets($Cryogel^{(R)}$ Z and $Pyrogel^{(R)}$ XT-E) and Multi-layer insulation(MLI). The aerogel blankets are known as high porous materials and the good insulators within a soft vacuum range($10^{-3}{\sim}1$ Torr). Also, MLI is known as the best insulator within a high vacuum range(<$10^{-6}{\sim}10^{-3}$ Torr). A vertical axial cryogenic experimental apparatus was designed to investigate the thermal performance of the composite layered insulators under cryogenic conditions as well as consist of a cold mass tank, a heat absorber, annular vacuum space, and an insulators space. The composite insulators were laminated in the insulator space that height was 50 mm. In this study, the effective thermal conductivities of the materials were evaluated by measuring boil-off rate of liquid nitrogen and liquid argon in the cold mass tank.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.42-46
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• 2008

Even though fuel cell have high efficiency when pure hydrogen from gas tank is used as a fuel source, it is more beneficial to generate hydrogen from city gas (mainly methane) in residential application such as domestic or office environments. Thus hydrogen is generated by reforming process using hydrocarbon. Unfortunately, the reforming process for hydrogen production is accompanied with unavoidable impurities. Impurities such as CO, $CO_2$, $H_2S$, $NH_3$, $CH_4$, and $CH_4$ in hydrogen could cause negative effects on fuel cell performance. Those effects are kinetic losses due to poisoning of the electrode catalysts, ohmic losses due to proton conductivity reduction including membrane and catalyst ionomer layers, and mass transport losses due to degrading catalyst layer structure and hydrophobic property. Hydrogen produced from reformer eventually contains around 73% of $H_2$, 20% or less of $CO_2$, 5.8% of less of $N_2$, or 2% less of $CH_4$, and 10ppm or less of CO. This study is aimed at investigating the effect of carbon dioxide on fuel cell performance. The performance of PEM fuel cell was investigated using current vs. potential experiment, long run(10 hr) test, and electrochemical impedance measurement when the concentrations of carbon dioxide were 10%, 20% and 30%. Also, the concentration of impurity supplied to the fuel cell was verified by gas chromatography(GC).