• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.2589-2593
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• 2008

In a fuel cell vehicle using polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC), hydrogen is over-supplied to gain higher stack efficiency. So it is needed considering fuel efficiency to re-circulate hydrogen which is not reacted in stack. And to re-circulate hydrogen, a blower or an ejector is used. Ejector re-circulation system has several merits compared with blower system, for example no parasite energy, simple structure and no lubrication system. But the secondary flow of an ejector in fuel cell vehicle, has high humidity because of crossover problem in stack. Therefore in this paper, ejector is designed by 1-D modeling and CFD with the primary and secondary flow of hydrogen. And the ejector which has the primary and secondary flow of air, is designed to have the same Reynolds number and Mach number at the nozzle exit as the hydrogen ejector's. And this air ejector is tested while the humidity of the secondary flow is varied.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1999.07d
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• pp.1876-1878
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• 1999

Developed was a 5kW-class polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) system comprised of fuel cell stack, fuel processing, thermal and water management subsystems and ancillary equipments. Several large single cells have been fabricated with different gas flow field patterns and paths, and the gas flow field pattern for the stack has been determined based on the single cell performance of thin film membrane electrode assembly (MEA). The PEMFC stack was consisted of 100 cells with an electrode area of $300cm^2$, having serpentine flow pattern. Fuel processing was developed including an autothermal methanol reformer and two preferential CO oxidation reactors. The fuel processing was combined to PEMFC operation system consisted of air compressor and thermal and water management subsystems. The PEMFC stack showed performance of 5kW under the supply of $H_2$ and air, but its performance was lowered to 3.5kW under the supply of reformed gas.

• 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 hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.208-215
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• 2009

PEMFC stack power output is needed to be around 100 kW to meet the requirements of automotive application and scaling-up the active area of the stack cells will allow a higher power. In the case of scaling-up the active area of cells, it is difficult to obtain uniform in-plane internal conditions such as temperature, relative humidity and stoichiometry of the feed gas. These ununiformity with the location in the cell would affect both the performance and durability of the stack, so it is important to understand phenomena in the cell for improving them. In this study, the current density, electrochemical resistance and performance distribution measurement was performed to understand the ununiformity in a single cell using in-situ method; (1) Current Density Distribution (CDD) Device and (2) Segmented Cell Fixture. The influence of location of feed gas on the performance of a single cell was experimentally measured and discussed by using a segmented single cell which was composed of 8 compartments. The correlation between the location and performance in a single cell was discussed by these two tools and it was extended between the local characterization and the durability in a MEA by comparing the used cell with a fresh one. It was also studied in terms of electrochemistry by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.300-309
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• 2012

Long endurance is a key issue in the application of unmanned aerial vehicles. This study presents feasibility test results when fuel cell system as an alternative to the conventional engine is applied for the power of the UAV after the 150W fuel cell system is developed and packaged to the 1/4 scale super cub airplane. Fuel cell system is operated by dead-end method in the anode part and periodically purged to remove the water droplet in flow field during the operation. Oxygen in the air is supplied to the stack by the two air blowers. And fuel cell stack is water cooled by cooling circuit to dissipate the heat generated during the fuel cell operation. Weight balance is considered to integrate the stack and balance of plant (BOP) in package layout. In flight performance test, we demonstrated 4 times standalone take-off and landing. In the laboratory test simulating the flight condition to quantify the energy flow, the system is analyzed in detail. Sankey diagram shows that electric efficiency of the fuel cell system is 39.2%, heat loss 50.1%, parasitic loss 8.96%, and unreacted purged gas 1.67%, respectively compared to the total hydrogen input energy. Feasibility test results show that fuel cell system is high efficient and appropriate for the power of UAV.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.541-544
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• 2005

This study presents the integrated modeling approach to simulate the proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system for vehicle application. The fuel cell system consisting of stack and balance of plant (BOP) was simulated with MATLAB/Simulink environment to estimate the maximum system power and investigate the effect of BOP component sizing on system performance and efficiency. The PEM fuel cell stack model was established by using a semi-empirical modeling. To maximize the net efficiency of fuel cel1 system, multi-variable optimization code was adopted. Using this method the optimized operating values were obtained according to various system net power levels. The fuel cell model established was co-linked to AVL CRUISE, a vehicle simulation package. Through the vehicle simulation software, the fuel economy of fuel cell powered electric vehicle for two types of driving cycles was presented and compared. It is expected that this study tan be effectively employed in the basic BOP component sizing and in establishing system operation map with respect to net power level of fuel cell system.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.492-501
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• 2017

A 900 W scale direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack is designed and fabricated for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. To meet the volume and weight requirements, metallic bipolar plates are applied to the DMFC stack for the first time wherein POS470FC was chosen as bipolar plate material. To ensure good robustness of the metallic bipolar plate based DMFC stack, finite element method based simulations are conducted using a commercial ANSYS Fluent software. The stress buildup and deformation characteristics on bipolar plates and end plates are analyzed in details. The present DMFC stack exhibits the performance of 1,130 W at 32 V and 35.3 A, clearly demonstrating that it could successfully operate for UAVs requiring around 1,000 W of power.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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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.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.370-375
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• 2013

We analyze the effects of CO poisoning and air bleeding on the performance of a PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cell stack fabricated using commercial MEA (membrane electrode assembly). Dynamic response data from the experiments on the performance of a stack are identified by obtaining steady-state gains and time-constants of the first-order system model expressed as a first-order differential equation. It is found that the cell voltage of the stack decreases by 1.3-1.6 mV as the CO concentration rises by 1 ppm. The time elapsed to reach a new steady state after a change in the CO concentration is shortened as the magnitude of the change in the CO concentration increases. In general, the steady-state gain becomes bigger and the time-constant gets smaller with increasing the air concentration (air-bleeding level) in the reformate gas to restore the cell voltage. However, it is possible to recover 87%-96% of the original cell voltages, which are measured with free of CO, within 1-30 min by introducing the bleed air as much as 1% of the reformate gas into the stack.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.563-567
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• 2009

The polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) with the advantages of low-operating temperature, high current density, low cost and volume, fast start-up ability, and suitability for discontinuous operation becomes the most reasonable and attractive power system for transportation vehicle and micro-grid power plant in a household. 200W PEM-type FCs system was integrated by this study, then the electrical characteristics and diagnosis of the fuel cell were analyzed with variations on mass flow rate and stack temperature. The ranges of the variations are 1~8L/min on $H_2$ volume and $20{\sim}70^{\circ}C$ on stack temperature.