• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.393-400
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• 2013

The air supply system has a significant effect on the efficiency of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) systems. The performance and efficiency of automotive PEMFC systems are greatly influenced by their air supply system configurations. This study deals with the system simulation of automotive PEMFC systems using MATLAB/Simulink framework. In this study, a low-pressure operating PEMFC system adopting blower sub-module (turbo-blower) is modeled to investigate the effects of stack operating temperature and air stoichiometry on the parasitic power and efficiency of automotive PEMFC systems. In addition, the PEMFC net system efficiency and parasitic power of air supply system are mainly compared for the two types (low-pressure operating and high-pressure operating) of automotive PEMFC systems under the same net power conditions. It is suggested that the obtained results from this system approach can be applied for establishing the novel operating strategies for FC vehicles.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.468-475
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• 2012

A proper stacking force and assembly are important to the performance of fuel cell. Improper assembly pressure may lead to leakage of fuels and high interfacial contact resistance, excessive assembly pressure may result in damage to the gas diffusion layer and other components. The pressure distribution of gas diffusion layer is important to make interfacial contact resistance less for stack performance. To analyze the influence of design parameter factors for pressure distribution, and to optimize stack design, DOE (Design of Experiment) was used for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stack pressure test. As commonly known, the higher clamping force improves the fuel cell stack performance. However, non-uniformity of stress distribution is also increased. It shows that optimization between clamping force and stress distribution is needed for well designed structure of fuel cell stack. In this study, stack design optimization method is suggested by using FEM (Finite Element Methode) and DOE for light-weighted fuel cell stack.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.8 s.251
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• pp.756-763
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• 2006

PEMFC has several technical problems such as water management, long term stability and performance degradation as. PEMFC has been studied not only to solve water management, but also to generate power in stable manner to system by using a hybrid system with auxiliary energy storage device. The purpose of this study is to couple PEMFC with supercapacitor to make a hybrid system and to design and test control strategies for stable power generation in case of changing output power. The polarization curve and dynamic behaviors while changing power were investigated to find out characteristics of PEMFC stack. A DC/DC converter was fabricated in order to increase fuel cell and supercapacitor voltage and to charge supercapacitor. We found that the operation strategy 2 was recommended to the system because of solving water management problem and increasing the dynamic behavior.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.21-24
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• 2008

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) is an attractive candidate for residential power generator due to fast start-up and stop, high efficiency, low emission, and high power density. In this study, we employ short module stack to understand the performance of the unit cell of the stack in terms of operating temperatures. To simulate the practical fuel cell stack of residential power generator, the structure and active area of the short module stack is kept the same as that of the practical fuel cell. The results shows that the electric potential of short module stack is different from the number of cells times the potential of unit cell because of cell-to-cell variation.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.32 no.spc3
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• pp.275-281
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• 2012

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) are the most appropriate for energy source of small robot applications. PEMFC has superior in power density and thermodynamic efficiency as compared with the Direct Methaol Fuel Cell (DMFC). Furthermore, PEMFC has lighter weight and smaller size than DMFC which are very important factors as small robot power system. The most significant factor of mobile robots is weight which relates closely with energy consumption and robot operation. This research tried to find optimum specifications in terms of type, number of cell, active area, cooling method, weight, and size. In order to find optimum 500W PEMFC, six options are designed in this paper and studied to reduce total stack weight by applying new materials and design innovations. However, still remaining problems are thermal management, robot space for energy sources, and soon. For a thermal management, design options need to analysis of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for determining which option has the improved performance and durability.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.181-189
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• 2018

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system receives great attention as a promising power device for automotive applications. For the wide commercialization, the efficiency and performance of automotive PEMFC system should be further improved in terms of total system (stack and balance of plant [BOP]). Air supply module, which is a major part of the BOP, greatly affects the efficiency of automotive PEMFC system. In this paper, a systematic study on the low-pressure automotive PEMFC system was made in an attempt to enhance the net system efficiency. This study mainly presents an investigation of the effect of blower configuration (1-blower and 2-blower) on the net system efficiency of automotive PEMFC system. For this purpose, the effect of operating pressure and cathode stoichiometry on the system efficiency was investigated with stack temperature under the fixed net system power condition. Results indicate that 1-blower system is better in system efficiency over 2-blower system under an air stoichiometry of 2. However, 2-blower system is better in system efficiency under an air stoichiometry of 3. The simulation results show that the optimum operating strategy needs to be established for various blower system configurations considering blower performance maps.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.211-216
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• 2012

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) are the most appropriate for energy source of small robot applications. PEMFC has superior in power density and thermodynamic efficiency as compared with the Direct Methaol Fuel Cell (DMFC). Furthermore, PEMFC has lighter weight and smaller size than DMFC which are very important factors as small robot power system. The most significant factor of mobile robots is weight which relates closely with energy consumption and robot operation. This research tried to find optimum specifications in terms of type, number of cell, active area, cooling method, weight, and size. In order to find optimum 500W PEMFC, six options are designed in this paper and studied to reduce total stack weight by applying new materials and design innovations. However, still remaining problems are thermal management, robot space for energy sources, and so on. For a thermal management, design options need to analysis of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for determining which option has the improved performance and durability.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.173-178
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• 2011

Separator of stack in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is high cost and heavy. If we make it low cost and lighter, it will have a great ripple. In this study, low carbon steel is used as base metal of separator because the cost of low carbon steel is very cheaper commercial metal material than stainless steels, which is widely used as separator. Low carbon steel has not a good corrosion resistance. In order to improve the corrosion resistance and electrolytic conductivity, low carbon steel needs to be surface treated. We made Chromium electroplated layer of $5{\mu}m$, $10{\mu}m$ thickness on the surface of low carbon steel and it was nitrided for 2 hours at $1000^{\circ}C$ in a furnace with 100 torr nitrogen gas pressure. Cross-sectional and surface microstructures of surface treated low carbon steel are investigated using SEM. And crystal structures are investigated by XRD. Interfacial contact resistance and corrosion tests were considered to simulate the internal operating conditions of PEMFC stack. The corrosion test was performed in 0.1 N $H_2SO_4$ + 2 ppm $F^-$ solution at $80^{\circ}C$. Throughout this research, we try to know that low carbon steel can be replaced stainless steel in separator of PEMFC.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.3140-3141
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• 2008

The output power efficiency of the fuel cell system depends on the demanded current, stack temperature, air excess ratio, hydrogen excess ratio and inlet air humidity. Thus, it is necessary to determine the optimal operation condition for maximum power efficiency. In this paper, we developed a dynamic model of fuel cell system which contains mass flow model, diffusivity gas layer model, membrane hydration and electrochemistry model. In order to determine the maximum output power and minimum use of hydrogen in a certain power condition, response surface methodology (RSM) optimization based on the proposed PEMFC stack model is presented. The results provide an effective method to optimize the operation condition under varied situations.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.257-262
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• 2001