• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.12 s.255
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• pp.1196-1202
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• 2006

A MEMS methanol reformer was fabricated and its performance was evaluated in the present study. Catalytic steam reforming of methanol was selected because the process had been widely applied in macro scale reformers. Conventional Cu/ZnO catalyst that was prepared by co-precipitation method to give the highest coating quality was used. The reactor structure was made by bonding three layers of glass wafers. The internal structure of the wafer was fabricated by the wet-etching process that resulted in a high aspect ratio. The internal surface of the reactor was coated by catalyst and individual wafers were fusion-bonded to form the reactor structure. The internal volume of the microfabricated reactor was $0.3cm^3$ and the reactor produced exhaust gas with hydrogen concentration at 73%. The production rate of hydrogen was 4.16 ml/hr that could generate power of 350 mW in a typical PEM fuel cell.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.258-264
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• 2018

This paper presents application of a differential search (DS) meta-heuristic optimization algorithm for optimal operation of a micro grid system. The DS algorithm simulates the Brownian-like random-walk movement used by an organism to migrate. The micro grid system consists of a wind turbine, a diesel generator, a fuel cell, and a photovoltaic system. The wind turbine generator is modeled by considering the characteristics of variable output. Optimization is aimed at minimizing the cost function of the system, including fuel costs and maximizing fuel efficiency to generate electric power. The simulation was applied to a micro grid system only. This study applies the DS algorithm with excellence and efficiency in terms of coding simplicity, fast convergence speed, and accuracy in the optimal operation of micro grids based on renewable energy resources, and we compared its optimum value to other algorithms to prove its superiority.