• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.125-132
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• 2009

Cylinder shaped air-breathing PEMFC has been developed to have small volume, low contact resistance and better air accessibility to the open cathode. This cylinder shaped design consists of an anode cylinder with helical flow channel and a cathode current collector with slits. The pressure distribution measurement according to the shapes was performed. The test result indicated that cylinder shaped fuel cell has better pressure distribution compared with the planar shaped fuel cell. The better pressure distribution was connected to the higher performance. The maximum power density of cylinder shaped fuel cell was about 20% higher than the planar shaped fuel cell. The maximum power density of the developed cylinder shaped air-breathing PEMFC with dry hydrogen was $220\;mW/cm^2$ and with humidified hydrogen was $293\;mW/cm^2$.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.35-41
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• 2010

Water management is an important issue of PEM fuel cell operation. Water is the product of the electrochemical reactions inside fuel cell. If liquid water accumulation becomes excessive in a fuel cell, water columns will clog the gas flow channel. This condition is referred to as flooding. A number of researchers have examined the water removal methods in order to improve the performance. In this paper, a new water removal method that investigates the use of vibro-acoutic methods is presented. Piezo-actuators which are devices to generate the flexural wave are attached at the end of a cathode bipolar plate. Flexural wave is used to impart energy to resting droplets and thus cause movement of the droplets in the direction of the traveling wave.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.2822-2827
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• 2008

Among the main components of PEM fuel cell, the functions of GDL are to transport reactants from the channel to the catalyst and remove reaction products from the catalyst and transport heat from the catalyst to the channels in the flow filed plate. Permeability of GDL is known to make it possible to enhance the gas transport through GDL, devoting to get better performance. In this paper, three dimensional numerical simulation of the fuel cell by the permeability of GDL is presented by using a FLUENT modified to include the electrochemical behavior. Results show that as permeability is higher than $10^{-12}m^2$, gradients of temperature distribution, oxygen molar concentration and current density distribution in MEA were decreased. Although heat generation was increased as high permeability, MEA's temperature was lower than the low permeability of GDL. This seems because that convection was higher affects in mass and heat transfer process than diffusion as permeability of GDL is increases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.1338-1348
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• 2016

A novel fully passive small modular superheated water reactor (SWR) for underwater deployment is designed to produce 160 MWe with steam at $500^{\circ}C$ to increase the thermodynamic efficiency compared with standard light water reactors. The SWR design is based on a conceptual 400-MWe integral SWR using the internally and externally cooled annular fuel (IXAF). The coolant boils in the external channels throughout the core to approximately the same quality as a conventional boiling water reactor and then the steam, instead of exiting the reactor pressure vessel, turns around and flows downward in the central channel of some IXAF fuel rods within each assembly and then flows upward through the rest of the IXAF pins in the assembly and exits the reactor pressure vessel as superheated steam. In this study, new cladding material to withstand high temperature steam in addition to the fuel mechanical and safety behavior is investigated. The steam temperature was found to depend on the thermal and mechanical characteristics of the fuel. The SWR showed a very different transient behavior compared with a boiling water reactor. The inter-play between the inner and outer channels of the IXAF was mainly beneficial except in the case of sudden reactivity insertion transients where additional control consideration is required.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.5 s.248
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• pp.489-495
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• 2006

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) should be sufficiently hydrated with a careful consideration of heat and water management. Water management has been a critical operation issue for better understanding the operation and optimizing the performance of a PEM fuel cell. The flooding on cathode side resulting from excess water can limit the fuel cell performance. In this study, the visual cell was designed and fabricated fur the visualization of liquid water droplet dynamics related to cathode flooding in flow channels. The experiment was carried out to observe the formation, growth and removal of water droplets using CCD imaging system. Effects of operating conditions such as cell temperature, air flow rate and air relative humidity on cathode flooding characteristics were mainly investigated. Based on this study, we can get the basic insight into flooding phenomena and its two-phase flow nature. It is expected that data obtained can be effectively used fur the setup and validation of two-phase PEM fuel cell models considering cathode flooding.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.3653-3664
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• 2021

In PWR three-dimensional transient coupling calculation software CORCA-K, the nodal Green's function method and diagonal implicit Runge Kutta method are used to solve the spatiotemporal neutron dynamic diffusion equation, and the single-phase closed channel model and one-dimensional cylindrical heat conduction transient model are used to calculate the coolant temperature and fuel temperature. The LMW, NEACRP and PWR MOX/UO₂ benchmarks and FangJiaShan (FJS) nuclear power plant (NPP) transient control rod move cases are used to verify the CORCA-K. The effects of burnup, fuel effective temperature and ejection rate on the control rod ejection process of PWR are analyzed. The conclusions are as follows: (1) core relative power and fuel Doppler temperature are in good agreement with the results of benchmark and ADPRES, and the deviation between with the reference results is within 3.0% in LMW and NEACRP benchmarks; 2) the variation trend of FJS NPP core transient parameters is consistent with the results of SMART and ADPRES. And the core relative power is in better agreement with the SMART when weighting coefficient is 0.7. Compared with SMART, the maximum deviation is -5.08% in the rod ejection condition and while -5.09% in the control rod complex movement condition.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.8
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• pp.3154-3165
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• 2022

During a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in the pressurized water reactor (PWR), there is a possibility that high temperature and internal pressure of the fuel rods lead to ballooning of the cladding, which causes a partial blockage of flow area in a subchannel. Such flow blockage would influence the core coolant flow, thus affecting the core heat transfer during a reflooding phase and subsequent severe accident. However, most of the system analysis codes simulate the accident process based on the assumed channel blockage ratio, resulting in the fact that the simulation results are not consistent with the actual situation. This paper integrates the developed core Fuel Rod Thermal-Mechanical Behavior analysis (FRTMB) module into the self-developed severe accident analysis code ISAA. At the same time, the existing flow blockage model is improved to make it possible to simulate the change of flow distribution due to fuel rod deformation. Finally, the ISAA-FRTMB is used to simulate the QUENCH-LOCA-0 experiment to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the improved flow blockage model, and then the effect of clad ballooning on core heat transfer and subsequent parts of core degradation is analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.118-123
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• 2006

Degradation of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) that is facilitated by on/off cycles is one of the most important issues for commercialization of fuel cell vehicles. When a PEMFC stack is shut down, residual hydrogen and induce high voltage equivalent to open circuit voltage to the cathode side that might cause sintering of Pt catalyst and facilitate formation of hydrogen peroxide at the anode side that might decompose $Nafionc\'{A}$ membrane. In this study, degradation of PEMFC exposed to repetitive on/off cycles was investigated by measuring i-V characteristics, ac impedance, cyclic voltammograms, gas leak, cross-sectional SEM images, and TEM images. To prevent degradation of PEMFC caused by the residual gases, hydrogen was removed from anode gas channel by gas-purging and by using a dummy resistance, that were found to be a very effective method.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2008

Many researches for effects of different flow configurations on performance of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell have extensively been done but the effects of flow direction at the same flow channel shape should be considered for optimal operation of fuel cell as well. In this paper a numerical computational methode for simulating entire reactive flow fields including anode and cathode flow has been developed and the effects of different flow direction at parallel flow was studied. Pressure drop along the flow channel and density distribution of reactant and products and water transport, ion conductivity across the membrane and I-V performance are compared in terms of flow directions(co-flow or counter-flow) using above numerical simulation method. The results show that the performance under counter-flow condition is superior to that under co-flow condition due to higher reactant and water transport resulting to higher ion conductivity of membrane.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.329-336
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• 2016

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) is one of the key components of membrane-electrode assembly (MEA), which plays important role in fuel cell performance together with catalysts. It is widely accepted that water channel morphology inside PEMs as a proton pathway significantly affects the PEM performance. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are a very useful tool to understand molecular and atomic structures of materials, so that many related researches are currently being studied. In this paper, we summarize the current research trend in MD simulations, present which properties can be characterized, and finally introduce the usefulness of MD simulations to the researchers for proton exchange membranes.