A Study on the Optimum Design for LTCC Micro-Reformer: (Performance Evaluation of Various Flow Channel Structures

'LTCC를 소재로 하는 마이크로 리포머의 최적 설계에 관한 연구: (다양한 채널구조에 따른 성능변화 고찰)'

The miniature fuel cells have emerged as a promising power source for applications such as cellular phones, small digital devices, and autonomous sensors to embedded monitors or to micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) devices. Several chemicals run candidate at a fuel in those systems, such as hydrogen. methanol, ethanol, acetic acid, and di-methyl ether (DME). Among them, hydrogen shows most efficient fuel performance. However, there are some difficulties in practical application for portable power sources. Therefore, more recently, there have been many efforts for development of micro-reformer to operate highly efficient micro fuel cells with liquid fuels such as methanol, ethanol, and DME In our experiments, we have integrated a micro-fuel processor system using low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) materials. Our integrated micro-fuel processor system is containing embedded heaters, cavities, and 3D structures of micro- channels within LTCC layers for embedding catalysts (cf. Figs. 1 and 2). In the micro-channels of LTCC, we have loaded $CuO/ZnO/Al_2O_3$ catalysts using several different coating methods such as powder packing or spraying, dipping, and washing of catalyst slurry.