• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.456-461
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• 2003

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device in which the energy of a chemical reaction is converted directly into electricity. By combining hydrogen fuel with oxygen from air, electricity is formed, without combustion of any form. Water and heat are the only by-products when hydrogen is used as the fuel source. Fuel cell stack consists of multi-layered unit cells. A unit cell consists of MEA and bipolar plates. The end plate of fuel cell stack should give a uniform distributed pressure to multi unit cell layers so as to reduce the contact resistance and to prevent the leakage of reactant gases and the damage of multi layer components. The current end plate is redundantly large and heavy. It makes the power per unit volume reduced. Topology optimization of end plate is conducted for mass reduction and enhancement of bending rigidity. The evaluation of the current design and the recommendation for the future design is remarked.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2014.11a
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• pp.32-33
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• 2014

수소자동차용 연료전지의 중요 핵심부품 중 하나인 금속분리판의 경우 표면 처리 및 코팅기법을 이용해 전기적 고전도 특성과 화학적 내부식 특성을 확보하는 것이 관건이다. 본 연구내용은 향후 상용화를 목적으로 지금까지 진행해 온 금속분리판을 위한 건식 진공 표면처리 및 코팅기술 개발 현황에 대한 것이다. 생산비용의 저가화와 대량생산 가능성을 고려하여 고속의 연속 전처리법 및 진공증착법을 기본 공정으로 선정하고, 고전도/내부식성 증착물질 선택에도 귀금속을 배제하는 등의 기본 전제와 연구 결과를 소개한다. 기 확보된 기술에 의한 접촉저항 및 내부식 특성은 미국 DOE의 2017년 목표치를 만족하는 결과를 보였다.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.164-175
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• 2009

CFD is used to analyze gas flow characteristics, power absorption, electron temperature, electron density and chemical species profile of an internal antenna type inductively coupled plasma system. An optimized grid generation technology is used for a complex real-scale models for industry. A bare metal antenna shows concentrated power absorption around rf a feeding line. Skin depth of power absorption for a system is modeled to 50 mm, which is reported 53 mm by experiments. For an application of bipolar plates for hydrogen fuel cells, multi-sheet loading ICP nitriding system is proposed using an internal ICP antenna. It shows higher atomic nitrogen density than reported simple pulsed dc nitriding systems. Minimum gap between sheets for uniform nitriding is modeled to be 39 mm.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.451-465
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• 2021

In this investigation, electrochemical characteristics and damage behavior of 316L stainless steel polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) were analyzed by potentiodynamic and potentiostatic tests in cathode operating condition of PEMFC. As the result of potentiodynamic polarization test, range of passive region was larger than range of active region. In the result of potentiostatic test, damage depth and width, pit volume, and surface roughness were increased 1.57, 1.27, 2.48, and 1.34 times, respectively, at 1.2 V compared to 0.6 V at 24 hours. Also, as a result of linear regression analysis of damage depth and width graph, trend lines of damage depth and width according to applied potentials were 16.6 and 14.3 times larger, respectively. This demonstrated that applied potential had a greater effect on pitting damage depth of 316L stainless steel. The damage tendency values were 0.329 at 6 hours and 0.633 at 24 hours with applied potentials, representing rapid growth in depth direction according to the test times and applied potentials. Scanning electron microscopy images revealed that surface of specimen exhibited clear pitting damage with test times and applied potentials, which was thought to be because a stable oxide film was formed by Cr and Mo.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.8 no.2 s.23
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• pp.15-27
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to improve the performance of Polymer electrolyte fuel cell(PEMFC) by studying the channel dimension of bipolar plates using commercial CFD program 'Fluent'. Simulations are done ranging from 0.5 to 3.0mm for different size in order to find the channel size which shoves the highst hydrogen consumption. The results showed that the smaller channel width, land width, channel depth, the higher hydrogen consumption in anode. When channel width is increased, the pressure drop in channel is decreased because total channel length Is decreased, and when land width is increased, the net hydrogen consumption is decreased because hydrogen is diffused under the land width. It is also found that the influence of hydrogen consumption is larger at different channel width than it at different land width. The change of hydrogen consumption with different channel depth isn't as large as it with different channel width, but channel depth has to be small as can as it does because it has influence on the volume of bipolar plates. however the hydrogen utilization among the channel sizes more than 1.0mm which can be machined in reality is the most at channel width 1.0, land width 1.0, channel depth 0.5mm and considered as optimum channel size. The fuel cell combined with 2cm${\times}$2cm diagonal or serpentine type flow field and MEA(Membrane Electrode Assembly) is tested using 100W PEMFC test station to confirm that the channel size studied in simulation. The results showed that diagonal and serpentine flow field have similarly high OCV and current density of diagonal (low field is higher($2-40mA/m^2$) than that of serpentine flow field under 0.6 voltage, but the current density of serpentine type has higher performance($5-10mA/m^2$) than that of diagonal flow field under 0.7-0.8 voltage.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.254-261
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• 2002

The fabrication method for the main components of the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stack such as electrodes, membrane-electrode assemblies, and bipolar plates was established for the effective electrode area of 240 ㎠. A counter-flow type 100-cell stack was fabricated by using the above components and then a maximum power of 7.44 kW for H$_2$/O$_2$ and 5.56 kW for H$_2$/air could be obtained at 70$\^{C}$ and 1 atm. It was seen that the distribution of the OCV for unit cells in the stack was uniform but the voltage deviation increased as the load increased due to the IR drop and the electrode polarization. The stack was applied to the power source of the fuel cell/battery hybrid electric golf car. It produced about 1 kW at a room temperature operation during the test run, which occupied about 43% of the total power required by the 2.3 kW motor.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.554-557
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• 2008

In this study, two types of central flow distributor designs are presented and compared to obtain the optimal compact design which has the least flow resistance and the uniform flow distribution in a vehicular fuel cell stack. For effective and reliable prediction on the thermo-flow characteristics of the reactants flow over the entire fuel cell stack domain, open channel flow in the bipolar plates of the power generating cells were simulated by applying a simplified flow resistance model with an empirical porous concept. A number of case studies were performed to figure out an optimal configuration of a central flow distributor device in terms of the time-dependent thermo-flow behavior and load-dependent flow distribution. The results showed that the stable and load-independent thermo-flow uniformity is very design specific, which is closely associated with the design of central manifolding devices in order to achieve the enhanced volumetric power density and the reliable long-lasting operating of fuel cells.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.442-450
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• 2001

Experiments were carried out on agglomeration of bipolarly charged particles in an alternating current electric field. Laboratory-scale setup was built and experiments were conducted at atmospheric condition. DOS(Di-octyl Sebacate) particles with 100% purity were generated by an atomizer. The particles were branched into two, each of which passed through a wire-to-plate type charging section where a positive or a negative DC high voltage was applied and was charged positively or negatively. These bipolarly charged particles together passed through an agglomeration section where an $\pm$20kV AC power was applied between two plates. The resident time in the agglomeration section was adjusted as l sec. Particle sampling was made by a cascade impactor (MOUDI). The effect of agglomeration system on the reduction ratio of particles below l ㎛ was 42∼45%. Effect of AC frequency on the particle size distribution was found insignificant.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.182-186
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• 2014

Two commercial carbon plates were evaluated as a current collector (bipolar plate) in the all vanadium redox-flow battery (V-RFB). The performance properties of V-RFB were test in the current density of $60mA/cm^2$. The electromotive forces (OCV at SOC 100%) of V-RFB using A and B current collector were 1.47 V and 1.54 V. The cell resistance of V-RFB using A current collector was $4.44{\sim}5.00{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ and $3.28{\sim}3.75{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ for charge and discharge, respectively. The cell resistance of V-RFB using B current collector was $4.19{\sim}4.42{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ and $4.71{\sim}5.49{\Omega}{\cdot}cm^2$ for charge and discharge, respectively. The performance of V-RFB using each current collector was evaluated. The performance of V-RFB using A current collector was 93.1%, 76.8% and 71.4% for average current efficiency, average voltage efficiency and average energy efficiency, respectively. The performance of V-RFB using B current collector was 96.4%, 73.6% and 71.0% for average current efficiency, average voltage efficiency and average energy efficiency, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.168-174
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• 2013

In this study, low-cost, high-speed deposition, excellent processability, high mechanical strength and electrical conductivity, chemical stability and corrosion resistance of stainless steel to meet the obsessive-compulsive (0.1 mm or less) were selected CrN thin film. new price reduction to sputter deposition causes - the possibility of sublimation source for inductively coupled plasma Cr rods were attempts by DC bias. 0.6 Pa Ar inductively coupled plasmas of 2.4 MHz, 500 W, keeping Cr Rod DC bias power 30 W (900 V, 0.02 A) is applied, $N_2$ flow rate of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 sccm by varying the characteristics of were analyzed. $N_2$ flow rate increases, decreases and $Cr_2N$, CrN was found to increase. In addition to corrosion resistance and contact resistance, corrosion resistance, electrical conductivity was evaluated. corrosion current density than $N_2$ 0 sccm was sure to rise in all, $N_2$ 1 sccm at $4.390{\times}10^{-7}$ (at 0.6 V) $A{\cdot}cm^{-2}$, respectively. electrical conductivity process results when $N_2$ 1 sccm 28.8 $m{\Omega}/cm^2$ with the lowest value of the contact resistance was confirmed that came out. The OES (SQ-2000) and QMS (CPM-300) using a reactive deposition process to add $N_2$ to maintain a uniform deposition rate was confirmed that.