• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.645-668
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• 2022

Hydrogen energy is emerging as an important means of carbon neutrality in the various sectors including power, transportation, storage, and industrial processes. Fuel cell power plants are the fastest spreading in the hydrogen ecosystem and are one of the key power sources among means of implementing carbon neutrality in 2050. However, high volatility in system marginal price (SMP) and renewable energy certificate (REC) prices, which affect the profits of fuel cell power plants, delay the investment timing and deployment. This study applied the real option methodology to analyze how the dual uncertainties in both SMP and REC prices affect the investment trigger price level in the irreversible investment decision of fuel cell power plants. The analysis is summarized into the following three. First, under the current Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), dual price uncertainties passed on to plant owners has significantly increased the investment trigger price relative to one under the deterministic price case. Second, reducing the volatility of REC price by half of the current level caused a significant drop in investment trigger prices and its investment trigger price is similar to one caused by offering one additional REC multiplier. Third, investment trigger price based on gray hydrogen and green hydrogen were analyzed along with the existing byproduct hydrogen-based fuel cells, and in the case of gray hydrogen, economic feasibility were narrowed significantly with green hydrogen when carbon costs were applied. The results of this study suggest that the current RPS system works as an obstacle to the deployment of fuel cell power plants, and policy that provides more stable revenue to plants is needed to build a more cost-effective and stable hydrogen ecosystem.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.271-279
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• 2014

A 25kW-class polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell system has been developed for the propulsion of a leisure boat. The fuel cell system was designed to satisfy various performance requirements, such as resistance to shock, stability under rolling and pitching oscillations, and durability under salinity condition, for its marine applications. Then, the major components including a 30kW-class PEM fuel cell stack, a DC-DC converter, a seawater cooling system, secondary battery packs, and balance of plants were developed for the fuel cell system. The PEM fuel cell stack employs a unique design structure called an anodic cascade-type stack design in which the anodic cells are divided into several blocks to maximize the fuel utilization without hydrogen recirculation devices. The performance evaluation results showed that the stack generated a maximum power of 31.0kW while maintaining a higher fuel utilization of 99.5% and an electrical efficiency of 56.1%. Combining the 30-kW stack with other components, the 25kW-class fuel cell system boat was fabricated for a leisure. As a result of testing, the fuel cell system reached an electrical efficiency of 48.0% at the maximum power of 25.6kW with stable operability. In the near future, two PEM fuel cell systems will be installed in a 20-m long leisure boat to supply electrical power up to 50kW for propelling the boat and for powering the auxiliary equipments.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.18-24
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• 2022

Hydrogen is a clean fuel and is used in many applications in power systems such as fuel cells. It has unique properties such as wide flammability, high burning velocity, and difficulty to liquefy, which lead to critical safety issues. Fire and explosion are the most frequently occurring accidents and one of the major reasons is autoignition. In the ignition process, the chemistry of hydrogen combustion depends mainly on radical pools, and the temperature at which chain-branching and terminating rates are equal is called the crossover temperature. This study addresses the homogeneous autoignition of diluted hydrogen-air mixtures to investigate the effects of dilution on the crossover temperature to prevent explosions in the future. The new criterion for crossover temperature is introduced by only hydrogen radicals to adjust more simply. The detailed calculations indicate that the crossover temperatures are low at high dilutions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen because the concentrations of active radicals are reduced when an inert gas is added. This result is expected to contribute to hydrogen safety and realize a hydrogen society in the future.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.252-272
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• 2017

Fuel cell systems have to satisfy acceptable operating reliability, sufficient lifetime and price to enter the market in competition with existing products. Fuel cells are made up of complex element technologies and various problems related to the failure of the components can affect the reliability and safety of the system. This problem can be overcome by introducing a monitoring and supervisory control system in addition to automatic control to detect the failure of the fuel cell quickly and properly diagnose the performance degradation. For the fault detection and diagnosis of polymer electrolyte fuel cells, the model based method using the theoretical superposition value and the non-model based method of checking the signal tendency or the converted signal characteristic can be applied. The methods analyzed in this paper can contribute to the development of integrated monitoring and control technology for the whole system as well as the stack.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.5-10
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• 2008

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.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.195-206
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• 2003

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells(PEMFC) are very interesting power source due to high power density, simple construction and operation at low temperature. But they have problems such as high cost, improvement of performance and effect of temperature. This problems can be approached using mathematical models which are useful tools for analysis and optimization of fuel cell performance and for heat and water management, in this paper, transient model consists of various energy terms associated with fuel cell operation using the mass and energy balance equation. And water transfer in the membrane is composed of back diffusion and electro-osmotic drag. The temperature calculated by transient model approximately agreed with the temperature measured by experiment in constant current condition.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2004

Hybrid power systems with fuel cells and batteries have the potential to improve the operation efficiency and dynamic response. A proper load management strategy is important to better system efficiency and endurance in hybrid systems. In this paper, a fuzzy logic algorithm has been used to determine the fuel cell output power depending on the external required power and the battery state of charge(SoC). If the required power of the hybrid system is small and the SoC is small, then the greater part of the fuel cell power is used to charge the battery pack. If the required power is relatively big and the SoC is big, then fuel cell and battery are concurrently used to supply the required power. These IF-THEN operation rules are implemented by fuzzy logic for the energy management system of hybrid system. The strategy is evaluated by simulation. The results show that fuzzy logic can be effectively used to optimize the operational efficiency of hybrid system and to maintain the battery SoC properly.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.309-314
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• 2012

Carbons derived by the pyrolysis of Sorona activated by $ZnCl_2$ in the ratio of 1:20 and non-porogen Sorona carbons are used as the electrode materials in asymmetric electrochemical supercapacitors and electrochemical behavior is investigated. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) reveals the porogen free carbons show a flake-like structure and the $ZnCl_2$-treated Sorona carbons have a loose, disjoint structure without any particular shape. Cyclic voltammetric (CV) studies show specific prolate rectangular shape and gives good capacitive properties.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.267-273
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• 2018

From the experiments of various temperature and gas compositions, total resistance which is composed of ohmic resistance, anode resistance, cathode resistance and Nernst loss was calculated wit simple assumption. In this work, the anode and the cathode resistance was modelled with new equation which can account for the correlation between the operating temperature and the gas composition. The proposed model can predict the resistance with maximum error of 2.57% and employed in the simulation of molten carbonate fuel cells.

• 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.