• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.344-351
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• 2005

Hydrogen energy will be considered one of the most important energy carries for the future not only as raw material of petroleum chemical industry but also as the fuel of the fuel cell. The hydrogen production based upon the water electrolysis system combined renewable energy or atomic power energy is being watched as long-term hydrogen sources. Hydrogen from fossil fuel, especially natural gas steam reforming, is the economical mass production method at this time. But the cost of $CO_2$ reduction is added in the economic analysis of hydrogen production processes. Therefore many different results are suggested from these analyses about old processes, and modified schemes are studying for the efficient development. In this review, status for the technology of hydrogen production from natural gas are summarized.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.364-377
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• 2014

The performances of a coupled reactor in which a steam reformer and a catalytic combustor were mounted simultaneously had been investigated and compared. The combustible offgas exhausted from the anode of SOFC and MCFC were utilized as heat sources for the endothermic steam methane reforming. The catalytic combustion was used in order to burn the combustible offgas. Thermal energy released by the catalytic combustion is directly transferred to the reformer surrounding the combustor. The various operational conditions such as fuel utilization rate, steam to carbon ratio, amount of catalysts, fuel cell loads were changed. And operating variables were comprehensively identified by sensitivity analysis. The fundamental results from this experimental study show the potential abilities of the coupled reactor. Therefore the results will be of help to design and manufacture the more better coupled reactor in the future.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.800-809
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• 2011

The reaction characteristics of an integrated reactor with steam reformer and catalytic combustor using anode offgas for high temperature fuel cells such as MCFC and SOFC have been experimentally investigated in the present study. The coupled reactor had a coaxial cylindrical shape, and the inner and the outer tube was packed with combustion catalysts and reforming catalysts, respectively. Thus, the endothermic steam reforming could proceed by absorbing heat from catalytic combustion of anode offgas. Results show that increasing inlet temperature and decreasing excess air ratio increased the reformer temperature, which led to the increase in $H_2$ yield. The reforming performance for SOFC conditions was better than that for MCFC conditions since the composition of flammable components became smaller for MCFC cases. Measured reformate composition under various test conditions correlated well with thermal equilibrium composition.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.467-470
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• 2006

For a mobile application such as cellular phone, micro fuel cells should be extremely compact and thin. RHFC can be an alternative solution because RHFC gives higher power density than DMFC and does not need ahydrogen storage vessel In this paper, RHFC using methanol fuel is made as a novel planar design without a PROX. Both reformer and cell are made closely in a same plate to share the heater of reformer with the cell. The PBI membrane is used in the cell. The reason is that high temperature of reformer can cause a performance drop when perfluorosulfonic acid membrane such as Nafion is used such a high temperature operation also guarantees the higher CO tolerance to MEA catalyst. The cell is designed as an air-breathing type which the cathode of the cell is opened to the air. The commercial Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 steam reformer catalyst is packed in reformer channel. The active area of MEA is $11.9cm^2$ and the peak power density was $27.5mW/cm^2$.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.108-114
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• 2011

Steam reformer was organized with steam reforming process and CO removing process. The steam reforming process needed high temperature, 600~900 $^{\circ}C$, for catalytic-reaction which was extract of hydrogen from steam and hydrocarbon. The effects of the evaporator configuration on its heat transfer characteristics were investigated both experimentally and numerically to pursue the miniaturization. In this study, three configurations were considered where the different structures were tested; empty, embossing and mesh filled. For the comparison of heat transfer performance of shape evaporator disk, numerical analysis using SC-Tetra code and experiment were carried out. In case of reformer system design, it should be considered heat transfer rate, differential pressure and fluid flow direction.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.91.1-91.1
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• 2010

The Reforming system is an effective method to generate hydrogen which uses for fuel cell system. The purpose of this study is to present characteristics of an autothermal reformer at various operating conditions and to investigate ideal conditions for reforming efficiency. Dominant chemical reactions are Full Combustion, Steam Reforming reaction, Water-Gas Shift reaction and Direct Steam Reforming reaction. Operating parameters of the autothermal reformer are inlet temperature, Oxygen to Carbon Ratio, Steam to Carbon Ratio and Gas Hourly Space Velocity. Autothermal reformer is filled with catalysis of a packbed-bed type. Using numerical approach, we have investigated on various reaction conditions.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.405-411
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• 2010

A 5kW class SOFC cogeneration system consisted of a hot box part, a cold BOP (balance of plant) part, and a hot water reservoir. The hot box part contained a stack, a fuel reformer, a catalytic combustor, and heat exchangers. A cold BOP part was composed of blowers, pumps, a water trap, and system control units. A 5kW stack was designed to integrate 2 sub-modules. In this paper, the 5kW class SOFC system was operated using 2 short stacks connected in parallel to test the sub-module and the system. A short stack had 15 cells with $15{\times}15 cm^2$ area. When a natural gas was used, the total power was about 1.38 kW at 120A. Because the sub-modules were connected in parallel and current was loaded using a DC load, voltages of sub-modules were same and the currents were distributed according to the resistance of sub-modules. The voltage of the first stack was 11.46 V at 61A and the voltage of the second stack was 11.49V at 59A.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.238-243
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• 2006

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.135-140
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• 2022

In addition to the stack that directly generates electricity by the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen, the fuel cell power generation system has a reformer that generates hydrogen from various fuels such as methanol and natural gas. It also consists of a power converter that converts the DC voltage generated in the stack into a stable AC voltage. The fuel cell output of such a system is direct current, and in order to be used at home, an inverter device that converts it into alternating current through a power converter is required. In addition, a DC-DC step-up converter is used to boost the fuel cell voltage to about 30~70V, which is the inverter operating voltage, to about 380V. The DC-DC step-up converter is a DC voltage variable device that exists between the fuel cell output and the inverter. Accordingly, since a constant output voltage of the converter is generated in response to a change in the output voltage of the fuel cell, the inverter can receive constant power regardless of the voltage change of the fuel cell. Therefore, in this paper, we discuss the detailed hardware design of the full-bridge converter, which is the main power source of the inverter that receives the fuel cell output voltage (30~70V) as an input and is applied to the grid among the members of the fuel cell power generation system.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.274-282
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• 2004

This study focused on the development of high performance catalyst for autothermal reforming (ATR) of gasoline to produce hydrogen. The ATR was carried out over MgO/Al2O3 supported metal catalysts prepared under various experimental conditions. The catalysts before and after reaction were characterized by N2-physisorption, CO-chemisorption, SEM and XRD. The performance of supported multi-metal catalysts were better than that of supported mono-metal catalysts. Especially, it was observed that the conversion of iso-octane over prepared Ni/Fe/MgO/Al2O3 catalyst was 99.9 % comparable with commercial catalyst (ICI) and the selectivity of hydrogen over the prepared catalyst was 65% higher than ICI catalyst. Furthermore, it was identified that the sulfur tolerance of prepared catalyst was much better than ICI catalyst based on the ATR reaction of iso-octane containing sulfur of 100 ppm. Therefore, Ni/Fe/MgO/Al2O3 catalyst can be applied for a fuel reformer, hydrogen station and on-board reformer in furl cell powered vehicles.