• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.56-62
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• 2021

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) is the high efficiency fuel cell operating at high temperatures ranging from 700-1000℃. Design of the flow paths of the fuel and air in SOFCs is important to improve cell performance and prevent cell degradation. However, the uneven distribution of current density in the traditional type having one inlet and outlet causes cell degradation. In this regard, the parallel flow path with two inlet and outlets was designed and compared to the traditional type based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. To check the cell performance, hydrogen distribution, velocity distribution and current density distribution were monitored. The results validated that the parallel designs with two inlets and outlets have a higher cell performance compared to the traditional design with one inlet and outlet due to a larger reaction area. In case of uniform-type paths, more uniform current density distribution was observed with less cross-sectional variation in flow paths. In case of contracted and expanded inflow paths, significant improvement of performance and uniform current density was not observed compared to uniform parallel path. Considering SOFC cell with uniform current density can prevent cell degradation, more suitable design of SOFC cell with less cross-sectional variation in the flow path should be developed. This work can be helpful to understand the role of flow distribution in the SOFC performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of IIIuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.183-187
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• 2008

This paper describes a power control scheme to improve the performance of a fuel cell battery hybrid power source for residential application. The proposed power control scheme includes a power control strategy to control the power flow of the fuel cell hybrid power system and a digital control technique for a front-end dc-dc converter of the fuel cell. The power control strategy enables the fuel cell to operate within the high efficiency region defined by the polarization curve and efficiency curve of the fuel cell. A dual boost converter with digital control is applied as a front-end dc-dc converter to control the fuel cell output power. The digital control technique of the converter employs a moving-average digital filter into its voltage feedback loop to cancel the low frequency harmonic current drawn from the fuel cell and then limits the fuel cell output current to a current limit using a predictive current limiter to keep the fuel cell operation within the high efficiency region as well as to minimize the fuel cell oxygen starvation.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.44 no.12
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• pp.720-726
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• 2007

Current collectors of SOFC play a significant role on the performance of power generation. In this study a single cell stacked SOFC was assembled using Ag-mesh as a cathode current collector, and evaluated its performance. No gas leakages of the single cell stack occurred in the tests of gas detection and OCV measurement. The OCV and initial power of the stack were 1.09V and $0.45W/cm^2$, respectively, under the flow rates of air at 2,500 cc/min and $H_2$ at 1,000 cc/min at the test temperature of $750^{\circ}C$. A degradation rate of 44.0% was measured during the prolonged time of 307 h. The relatively low durability of the tested single cell stack was found to be the evaporation of Ag-mesh at the current corrector.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2003.07b
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• pp.957-960
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• 2003

Many solar cell way need to be connected by series or parallel to extract the high power Especially, during parallel operation to reduce circulation current the individual converter has to share and control the load current. Generally, Current Sharing(CS) can be implemented using droop and active current sharing method. In this paper, one 3[KW] PWM converter was replaced as one 3[KW] solar cell array(3 parallels, each parallel has twenty single modules), two 3[KW] solar cell way Is Paralleled to generate 6[KW] power. Also each converter used voltage-current controller and Automatic MSCPM(Master-Slave Current-programming Method) for current sharing(AS).

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.71-77
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• 2001

This paper proposes a new zero-current switching (ZCS) pulse-width modulation (PWM) switch cell that has no additional conduction loss of the main switch. In this cell, the main switch and the auxiliary switch turn on and turn off under zero current condition. The diodes commutate softly and the reverse recovery problems are alleviated. The conduction loss and the current stress of the main switch are minimized, since the resonating current stress of the main switch are minimized, since the resonating current for the soft switching does not flow through the main switch. Based on the proposed ZCS PWM switch cell, a new family of DC to DC PWM converters is derived. The new family of ZCS PWM converters is suitable for the high power applications employing IGBTs. Among the new family of DC to DB PWM converters, a boost converter was taken as an example and has been analyzed. Design guidelines with a design example are described and verified by experimental results from the 2.5 kW prototype converter operating at 40 kHz.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.247-255
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• 2018

This paper proposes a transformer design of a direct cell-to-cell active cell balancing circuit with a multi-winding transformer for battery management system (BMS) applications. The coupling coefficient of the multi-winding transformer and the output capacitance of MOSFETs significantly affect the balancing current transfer efficiency of the cell balancing operation. During the operation, the multi-winding transformer stores the energy charged in a specific source cell and subsequently transfers this energy to the target cell. However, the leakage inductance of the multi-winding transformer and the output capacitance of the MOSFET induce an abnormal energy transfer to the non-target cells, thereby degrading the transfer efficiency of the balancing current in each cell balancing operation. The impacts of the balancing current transfer efficiency deterioration are analyzed and a transformer design methodology that considers the coupling coefficient is proposed to enhance the transfer efficiency of the balancing current. The efficiency improvements resulting from the selection of an appropriate coupling coefficient are verified by conducting a simulation and experiment with a 1 W prototype cell balancing circuit.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.357-360
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• 2009

The present study focused on the segmented cell which has the similar performance to unaltered (not segmented) cell in real operating condition. Many literatures have been made the segmented cell to observe the behavior of local current density distribution in the single cell. However, it has been lack of scheme to segment the cell in that the detailed interpretation of segmenting in analytic point of view was insufficient. Hence, the basic idea of segmenting was introduced to determine the component to be segmented in anode side of unit cell. The electrical contact/bulk resistance was measured by using four wire/probe method through each part of cell components including MEA, GDL, Bipolar Plate and Current Collector. Electron transport mechanism was predicted by comparing resistance values which were obtained from the experiment. As a result, this offered a great benefit to segment the cell efficiently. With this method further experiments would be conducted in research areas which require current density distribution at the same operating condition as unaltered cell.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.226-231
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• 2022

Power converter are usually equipped for fuel cell power generation system to connect alternating current (AC) electric power grid. When converting direct current (DC) of fuel cell power source into AC, the power converter has a frequency ripple, which affects the fuel cell and the grid. Therefore, an equivalent circuit having dynamic characteristics of fuel cell power, for example, impedance, is useful for designing an inverter circuit. In this study, the current, voltage and impedance characteristics were calculated through fuel cell modeling and validated by comparing them with experiments. The equivalent circuit element values according to the current density were formulated into equations so that it could be applied to the circuit design. It is expected that the process of the equivalent circuit modeling will be applied to the actual inverter circuit design and simulated fuel cell power sources.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.35-38
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• 2012

In this study, we have attempted to characterize the photovoltaic effect in real-time measurement of photoinduced current in a poly-Si-based solar cell using photoconductive atomic force microscopy (PC-AFM). However, the high contact resistance that originates from the metal-semiconductor Schottky contact disturbs the current flow and makes it difficult to measure the photoinduced current. To solve this problem, a thin metallic film has been coated on the surface of the device, which successfully decreases the contact resistance. In the PC-AFM analysis, we used a metal-coated conducting cantilever tip as the top electrode of the solar cell and light from a halogen lamp was irradiated on the PC-AFM scanning region. As the light intensity becomes stronger, the current value increases up to $200{\mu}A$ at 80 W, as more electrons and hole carriers are generated because of the photovoltaic effect. The ratio of the conducting area at different conditions was calculated, and it showed a behavior similar to that generated by a photoinduced current. On analyzing the PC-AFM measurement results, we have verified the correlation between the light intensity and photoinduced current of the poly-Si-based solar cell in nanometer scale.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.61-72
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• 2007

This study proposed a high efficiency DC-DC converter with a new current doubler rectifier for fuel-cell systems for use with the Nexa(310-0027) PEMFC from the Ballard Co. The proposed high efficiency DC-DC converter for the fuel-cell system generated ZVS by applying partial resonance and using a phase shift PWM control method. Constantly switching frequency, loss of switching, peak current, and peak voltage were reduced by this system. In addition to this system, two inductors were attached to a rectifier circuit allowing it to be able to provide the direct current(DC) and DC voltage safely to a load with reduced ripple components. Also, by using the newly proposed current doubler rectifier, the high frequency DC-DC converter for the fuel cell system was capable of reaching a highest efficiency of 92[%] as compared to 88.3[%] efficiency in previous results, which means that efficiency increased 3.7[%]. The overall results were confirmed by a simulation and laboratory experiment.