• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.76-83
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• 2014

During PEMFC(Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell) operation monitoring and diagnosis are important issues for reliability and durability. Stack defect can be followed by a critical cell voltage drop in the stack. One method for monitoring the cell voltage is CVM(Cell Voltage Monitoring), where all cells in the stack are electrically connected to a voltage measuring system and monitored these voltages. The other methods are based on the EIS(Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy) and on nonlinear frequency response. In this paper, intermodulation(IM) method for diagnosis PEMFC stack is introduced. To detect one or more critical PEMFC cell voltage PEMFC stack is excited by two or more test sinusoid current, and the frequency response of the stack voltage is analyzed. If one or more critical cell voltage exists, higher harmonics on the voltage frequency spectrum will appear. For the proposed IM method, stack simulation and experiments are conducted.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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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.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.144-154
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• 2016

HT-PEMFC (high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell) using PA (phosphoric acid) doped PBI (polybenzimidazole) membrane has been researched for extending the lifetime. However, the existing work on durability of HT-PEMFC focuses on identifying degradation causes of lab scale. The short life time of HT-PEMFC is still the problem for its commercialization. In this paper, an operating method to maximize life time of 5kW HT-PEMFC stack are proposed. The proposed method includes major steps such as minimization of OCV (Open Circuit Voltage) exposure, control of the proper stack temperature, and N2 purging for the stack. This long life operating method was based on the fragmentary results of degradation from previous research works. Experimentally, the 5 kW homemade HT-PEMFC stack was operated for a long time based on the proposed method and the stack successfully can operate within the desired degradation rate for the target life time.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.300-309
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• 2012

Long endurance is a key issue in the application of unmanned aerial vehicles. This study presents feasibility test results when fuel cell system as an alternative to the conventional engine is applied for the power of the UAV after the 150W fuel cell system is developed and packaged to the 1/4 scale super cub airplane. Fuel cell system is operated by dead-end method in the anode part and periodically purged to remove the water droplet in flow field during the operation. Oxygen in the air is supplied to the stack by the two air blowers. And fuel cell stack is water cooled by cooling circuit to dissipate the heat generated during the fuel cell operation. Weight balance is considered to integrate the stack and balance of plant (BOP) in package layout. In flight performance test, we demonstrated 4 times standalone take-off and landing. In the laboratory test simulating the flight condition to quantify the energy flow, the system is analyzed in detail. Sankey diagram shows that electric efficiency of the fuel cell system is 39.2%, heat loss 50.1%, parasitic loss 8.96%, and unreacted purged gas 1.67%, respectively compared to the total hydrogen input energy. Feasibility test results show that fuel cell system is high efficient and appropriate for the power of UAV.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.87-93
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• 2008

The $CO_2$ air conditioning system installed in fuel cell vehicles could be used either for stack cooling or for cabin cooling, and thus was used for the stack cooling when additional stack heat release was required over a fixed radiator capacity for high power generation. This study investigated the performance of the stack cooling system using $CO_2$ air conditioner at various operating conditions. Also, the heat releasing effectiveness and mutual interference were analyzed for the stack cooling system using an air conditioner and compared with the conventional radiator cooling system with/without cabin cooling. The heat release of the stack cooling system with the aid of $CO_2$ air conditioner increased up to 36% more than that of the conventional radiator cooling system with cabin cooling. Furthermore, the heat release of the stack cooling system using $CO_2$ air conditioner increased more by 7% than that of the conventional radiator cooling system without cabin cooling.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2004

A 12-cell PEMFC stack was fabricated using the TiN-coated 316 stainless steel bipolar plates as substitute for the expensive and brittle graphite bipolar plates. Open cirtuit voltage and the maximum power of the stack was 12.08 V and 1.197 kW (199.5 A @ 6 V), respectively. Volumetric and gravimetric power density of the stack was calculated to be 373 W/L and 168 W/kg, respectively. Performance of each cell was quite uniform initially while degraded at a singnificantly different rate. During the 1,000 hr-operation at a constant load of 48 A, stack voltage decreased from 9.0 to 7.98 V at a degradation rate of 11 %/1,000 hr. However, degradation rate of each cell was in the wide rage from 1.2 to 31 %/1,000 hr.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.44 no.12
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• pp.720-726
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• 2007

Current collectors of SOFC play a significant role on the performance of power generation. In this study a single cell stacked SOFC was assembled using Ag-mesh as a cathode current collector, and evaluated its performance. No gas leakages of the single cell stack occurred in the tests of gas detection and OCV measurement. The OCV and initial power of the stack were 1.09V and $0.45W/cm^2$, respectively, under the flow rates of air at 2,500 cc/min and $H_2$ at 1,000 cc/min at the test temperature of $750^{\circ}C$. A degradation rate of 44.0% was measured during the prolonged time of 307 h. The relatively low durability of the tested single cell stack was found to be the evaporation of Ag-mesh at the current corrector.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.54-61
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• 2004

Temperature characteristics in a stack of molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) have been investigated with simulation based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes and experimental way. The MCFC has generally two stack structures when the natural gas is used as fuel; one is the external reforming type and the other is internal reforming type. Computer simulation at the external reforming stack suggests that the maximum temperature in the stack depends on the gas flow length. The 2 kW MCFC stack with 25 cm gas flow length showed about $675^\circ{C}$ of maximum temperature.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.21-26
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• 2007

DMFC(Direct Methanol Fuel Cell) has been considered as an attractive option to produce electric power in many application. In this study, in order to estimate the effects of the methanol concentration, wind velocity and temperature on the performance of DMFC, a physical prototype of DMFC was designed and manufactured, and the stack voltage of DMFC was measured during the operation of DMFC. Expecially, the experimental results showed that a low stack temperature, a low wind velocity and an excess methanol concentration lead to the increase of the time to reach the maximum stack voltage.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06d
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• pp.146-151
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• 2001

Several design parameters for a 100 kW molten carbonate fuel cell stack was described. Approximately 170 cells are required to generate 100 kW at a current density of $125\;mA/cm^{2}$ with $6000\;cm^{2}$ cells. An overall heat balance was calculated to predict exit temperature. In order to limit the stack temperature in the range of $600-700^{\circ}C$, current load cannot exceed $75\;mA/cm^{2}$ at atmospheric operation. The 100 kW power is expected only under pressurization. Recycle of cathode gas by more than 50% is recommended to run the stack at $125\;mA/cm^{2}$ and 3 atm. Manifolds should be designed based on gas flow rates for the suggested operating condition.