• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.245-251
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• 2016

A numerical model is developed to predict distributions of current density and temperature. Also the complete fuel cell performances were compared. In this study the effect of flow field design and flow direction on current density and temperature distribution as well as full cell performance. The complete three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations were solved with convergence of electro-chemical reactions terms. In this paper, the two different flow field design were simulated, straight channel and rectangular serpentine flow channel, which is commonly used. The effect of flow direction, co-flow and counter-flow, was also analyzed. The current density and temperature is higher with abundant oxygen not fuel. Also, temperature distribution was able to be drawn by using computer simulation. In this paper, the relationship among flow pattern, flow field design and current denstity distribution.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1999.07d
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• pp.1876-1878
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• 1999

Developed was a 5kW-class polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) system comprised of fuel cell stack, fuel processing, thermal and water management subsystems and ancillary equipments. Several large single cells have been fabricated with different gas flow field patterns and paths, and the gas flow field pattern for the stack has been determined based on the single cell performance of thin film membrane electrode assembly (MEA). The PEMFC stack was consisted of 100 cells with an electrode area of $300cm^2$, having serpentine flow pattern. Fuel processing was developed including an autothermal methanol reformer and two preferential CO oxidation reactors. The fuel processing was combined to PEMFC operation system consisted of air compressor and thermal and water management subsystems. The PEMFC stack showed performance of 5kW under the supply of $H_2$ and air, but its performance was lowered to 3.5kW under the supply of reformed gas.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.31-36
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• 2015

The demand for multi-functionality, high density, high performance, and miniaturization of IC devices has caused the technology paradigm shift for electronic packaging. So, thermal management of new packaged chips becomes a bottleneck for the performance of next generation devices. Among various thermal solutions such as heat sink, heat spreader, TIM, thermoelectric cooler, etc. on-chip liquid cooling module was investigated in this study. Micro-channel was fabricated on Si wafer using a deep reactive ion etching, and 3 different micro-channel designs (straight MC, serpentine MC, zigzag MC) were formed to evalute the effectiveness of liquid cooling. At the heating temperature of $200^{\circ}C$ and coolant flow rate of 150ml/min, straight MC showed the high temperature differential of ${\sim}44^{\circ}C$ after liquid cooling. The shape of liquid flowing through micro-channel was observed by fluorescence microscope, and the temperarue differential of liquid cooling module was measuremd by IR microscope.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.61-67
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• 2009

Flow-field design has much influence over the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) because it affects the pressure magnitude and distribution of the reactant gases. To obtain the pressure magnitude and distribution of reactant gases in five kinds of flow-field designs, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed. After the CFD analysis, a single cell test was carried out to obtain the performance values. As expected, the pressure differences due to different flow-field configurations were related to the PEMFC performance because the actual performance results showed the same tendency as the results of the CFD analysis. A large pressure drop resulted in high PEMFC performance. The single serpentine configuration gave the highest performance because of the high pressure difference magnitudes of the inlet/outlet. On the other hand, the parallel flow-field configuration gave the lowest performance because the pressure difference between inlet and outlet was the lowest.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.624-632
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• 2008

In this research, we developed new PDMS-glass based microbiochip consisted of the micromixer and microreactor for DNA ligation. The micromixer was composed of a straight channel integrated with nozzles and pillars, and the microreactor was composed of a serpentine channel. We coated the PDMS chip surface with the 0.25wt.% PVP solution to prevent the bubble generation which was caused by the hydrophobicity of the PDMS. The new micomixer was passive type and the mixing was enhanced by a convective diffusion using the nozzle and pillar. The 10.33mm long micromixer showed the good mixing efficiency of 87.7% at 500 l/min flow rate. We could perform the DNA ligation successfully in the microbiochip, and the ligation time was shortened from 4 hours in conventional laboratory method to 5 min in the microbiochip.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.467-473
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• 2008

This study is to investigate the influence of catalyst loading quantity on the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) performance. In this paper, Pt-Ru and Pt-black loading as the catalyst were varied from 1 to $4mg/cm^2$ at the anode and cathode, respectively. The experiment was conducted with single fuel cell consisted of $5cm^2$ effective electrode area, serpentine type flow pattern and Nafion 117 membrane. Also, AC impedance and methanol crossover current were measured to investigate the performance loss precisely. As a result, the performance of fuel cell was significantly increased with the increase of cathode catalyst loading. However, the performance did not increase further above a certain Pt-Ru catalyst loading as the increase of anode catalyst loading.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.115-121
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• 2008

In this paper, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamic model of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) with serpentine flow channel is presented. A steady state, single phase and isothermal numerical model has been established to investigate the influence of the GDL (Gas Diffusion Layer) parameters. The GDL is made of a porous material such as carbon cloth, carbon paper or metal wire mesh. For the simplicity, the GDL is modeled as a block of material having numerous pathways through which gaseous reactants and liquid water can pass. The porosity, permeability and thickness of the GDL, which are employed in the model parameters significantly affect the PEMFC performance at the high current region.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.331-337
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• 2017

A simple strategy is proposed herein for attaining uniform current distribution in direct methanol fuel cells by varying the catalyst loading over the electrode. In order to use the same total catalyst amount for a serpentine flow field, three spatial variation types of catalyst loading were selected: enhancing the cathode catalyst loading (i) near the cathode outlet, (ii) near the cathode inlet, and (iii) near the lateral areas. These variations in catalyst loading are shown to improve the homogeneity of the current distribution, particularly at lower currents and lower air-flow rates. Among these three variations, increased loading near the lateral areas was shown to contribute most to achieving a homogenous current distribution. The mechanism underlying each catalyst loading variation method is different; very high catalyst-loading is shown to decrease the homogeneity of the distribution, which may be caused by water management in the thick catalyst layer thereof.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 2011

In this study, we investigated the hydrodynamic and thermal performance of constructal architectures on the basis of the mass flow rates for a given pressure drop, and we determined the thermal resistance and flow uniformity. The five flow configuration used in this study were the first construct with optimized hydraulic diameter, the second construct with optimized hydraulic diameter, the first construct with non-optimized hydraulic diameter, second construct with non-optimized hydraulic diameter, and a serpentine configuration. The results of our study suggest that the best fluid-flow structure is the second constructal structure with optimized constructal configurations. We also found that in the case of the optimized structure of cooling plates, the heat transfer was remarkably higher and the pumping power was significantly lower than those of traditional channels.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.442-448
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• 2021

Flow field is an important parameter for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) performance to have an effect on the reactant supply, heat and water diffusion, and contact resistance. In this study, PEMFC performance was investigated using Cu foam flow field at the cathode of 25 cm² unit cell. Polarization curve and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were performed at different pressure and relative humidity conditions. The Cu foam showed lower cell performance than that of serpentine type due to its high ohmic resistance, but lower activation and concentration loss due to the even reactant distribution of porous structure. Cu foam has the advantage of effective water transport because of its hydrophobicity. However, it showed low membrane hydration at low humidity condition. The metal foam flow field could improve fuel cell performance with a uniform pressure distribution and effective water management, so future research on the properties of metal foam should be conducted to reduce electrical resistance of bipolar plate.