• 설비공학논문집
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• 제20권3호
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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 Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.344-355
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• 2017

In this study, a numerical approach is adopted to investigate the effectiveness factors for distributed electrochemical reactions in thin active reaction layers of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), taking into account the Butler-Volmer reaction kinetics. The mathematical equations for the electrochemical reaction and charge conduction process were formulated by assuming that the active reaction layer has a small thickness, homogeneous microstructure, and high effective electronic conductivity. The effectiveness factor is defined as the ratio of the actual reaction rate (or equivalently, current generation rate) in the active reaction layer to the nominal reaction rate. From extensive numerical calculations, the effectiveness factors were obtained for various charge transfer coefficients of 0.3-0.8. These effectiveness data were then fitted to simple correlation equations, and the resulting correlation coefficients are presented along with estimated magnitude of error.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국신재생에너지학회 2005년도 춘계학술대회
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• pp.277-280
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• 2005

Air-breathing polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are highly promising particularly for small-power applications up to tens watts class. A distinctive feature of the air-breathing PEMFC is its simple system configuration in which axial fans operate for dual purposes, supplying both oxidant and coolant in a single manner. In the present study, a nominal SOW air-breathing PEMFC system is developed and investigated to determine the optimal operating strategy through parametric studies (i.e., reactant humidity, and fan-blowing flow rate). The cell voltage distributions are examined as a function of time to evaluate the system performance under various operating conditions.

• 한국재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국재료학회 2012년도 춘계학술발표대회
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• pp.71.2-71.2
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• 2012

There are rising demands for developing more efficient energy materials to stem the depletion of fossil fuels, which have prompted significant research efforts on proton exchange fuel cells (PEFCs) and lithium ion batteries (LIBs). To date, both PEFCs and LIBs are being widely developed to power small electronics, however, their utilization to medium-large sized electric power resources such as vehicle and stationary energy storage systems still appears distant. These technologies increasingly rely upon polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) that transport ions from the anode to the cathode to balance the flow of electrons in an external circuit, and therefore play a central role in determining the efficiency of the devices; as ion transport is a kinetic bottleneck compared to electrical conductivity, enormous efforts have been devoted to improving the transport properties of PEMs. In present study, we carried out an in-depth analysis of the morphology effects on transport properties of PEMs. How parameters such as self-assembled nanostructures, domain sizes, and domain orientations affect conductivities of PEMs will be presented.

• 한국수소및신에너지학회논문집
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• 제14권3호
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• pp.229-235
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• 2003

A 50W class MCFC stack was operated in order to test a new design of the circular shaped separator. in the new design, the anode gas was supplied into the stack and was exhausted out of the stack after the anode reaction. The exhausted gas was reacted with the cathode gas supplied with excess oxygen in the vessel in which the stack was placed. Then the reacted gas flowed into the cathode side of the stack and was exhausted through the outlet located in the center of the stack. The average voltage of the single cells in the stack was 0.835V under the current density of $150mA/cm^2$, initially, and the degradation rate of the stack voltage was 1.7%/1,000h. High stack voltage with good stability of the present stack was due to the small temperature gradient in the stack. The small temperature gradient as well as the easiness of temperature control was the result of the new configuration of the separator which utilized the heat of the combustion reaction between anode outlet gas and the cathode inlet gas for heating the stack.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국신재생에너지학회 2009년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.286-286
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• 2009

A small PEM fuel cell has two different stack configurations such as active and passive stacks. The active stack has a distintion of high power density although it makes system complex by using alr blower and related BOPs resulting in large system volume. On the contrary, passive stack has an advantage of compact system because it doesn't need air supplying devices although it reveals relatively low stack power density. In this study we fabricated two 10W PEMFC stacks with different stack configurations, active and passive stacks, and tested their performance and stability. The active stack consists of 13cells with an active area of $5cm^2$. The passive stack has 12cells with an active area of $16cm^2$. When we compared the stack performance of those stacks, the active stack showed higher power density compared to the passive stack, particularly at high voltage regions. However, at low voltage and high current regions, the passive stack performance was comparable to the active stack. The stack stability was largely dependent on the fuel humidity, particularly for active stack. At low humidity conditions, the active stack performance was decreased continuously and the cell voltage distribution was not uniform showing seriously low cell voltage at center cells mainly due to the cell drying. The passive stack showed relatively stable behavior at low humidity and the stack performance was largely dependent on the atmospheric conditions.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• 제2권1호
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• pp.39-44
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• 2011

Sub-micrometer $La_{0.8}Ca_{0.2}CrO_3$ powders for ceramic interconnects of solid oxide fuel cells were synthesized by the aqueous combustion process. The materials were prepared from the precursor solutions with different glycine (fuel)-to-nitrate (oxidant) ratios (${\phi}$). Single-phase $La_{0.8}Ca_{0.2}CrO_3$ powders with a perovskite structure were obtained after combustion when ${\phi}$ was equal to or larger than 0.480. Especially, the stoichiometric precursor with ${\phi}$ = 0.555 yielded the spherical $La_{0.8}Ca_{0.2}CrO_3$ particles with 150-250 nm diameters after calcination at $1000^{\circ}C$. When compared with the powders synthesized by the solid-state reaction, the combustion-derived, fine powders exhibited improved sinterability, leading to near-full densification at $1400^{\circ}C$ in oxidizing atmospheres. Moreover, a small quantity of glass additives was used to reduce the sintering temperature, and considerable densification was indeed achieved at temperatures as low as $1100^{\circ}C$.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국신재생에너지학회 2007년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.39-42
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• 2007

Hydrogen fuel cell is clean and efficient technology along with high energy densities. While there are many different types of fuel cells, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell stands out as one of the most promising for transportation and small stationary applications. This paper focuses on design of bipolar plate for proton exchange membrane fuel cell. The bipolar plate model is realistically and accurately simulated velocity distribution, current density distribution and its effect on the PEMFC system using CFD tool FLUENT.

• 소성∙가공
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• 제17권8호
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• pp.594-599
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• 2008

This paper presents a micro air pump based on the synthetic jet to supply reactant at the cathode side for micro fuel cells. The synthetic jet is a zero mass flux device that converts electrical energy into the momentum. The synthetic jet actuation is usually generated by a traditional PZT-driven actuator, which consists of a small cylindrical cavity, orifices and PZT diaphragms. Therefore, it is very important that the design parameters are optimized because of the simple configuration. To design the synthetic jet micro air pump, a numerical analysis has been conducted for flow characteristics with respect to various geometries. From results of numerical analysis, the micro air pump has been fabricated by the PDMS replication process. The most important design factors of the micro air pump in micro fuel cells are the small size and low power consumption. To satisfy the design targets, we used SP4423 micro chip that is high voltage output DC-AC converter to control the PZT. The SP4423 micro chips can operate from $2.2{\sim}6V$ power supply(or battery) and is capable of supplying up to 200V signals. So it is possible to make small size controller and low power consumption under 0.1W. The size of micro air pump was $16{\times}13{\times}3mm^3$ and the performance test was conducted. With a voltage of 3V at 800Hz, the air pump's flow rate was 2.4cc/min and its power consumption was only 0.15W.

• 대한기계학회논문집B
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• 제32권9호
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• pp.652-658
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• 2008

Design performances of the fuel cell / gas turbine hybrid power generation systems based on two different fuel cells (PEMFC, SOFC) have been comparatively analyzed. In each system, the fuel cell operates at an elevated pressure corresponding to the compressed air pressure of the gas turbine. Both internally and externally reformed systems were analyzed for the SOFC hybrid system. Component design parameters of 10kW class small systems are assumed. For all hybrid systems, increasing the turbine inlet temperature increases the power portion of the gas turbine. With increasing the turbine inlet temperature, system efficiency decreases in the PEMFC system and the internally reformed SOFC system while that of the externally reformed SOFC system increases slightly. The internally reformed SOFC hybrid system is predicted to exhibit the best system efficiency.