• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.40-50
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• 2012

The electrification of the waste heat of stack is necessary to enhance the efficiency of fuel cell system. For this purpose, the hybrid SOFC/GT/ST system is suitable. The purpose of this work is to predict the performance of methane fueled SOFC/GT/ST hybrid power system and to analyze the influence of operating temperature of stack, current density of stack, and gas turbine pressure ratio. According to the analysis, it is proved that the SOFC/GT/ST hybrid system suppress the rapid decrease in efficiency and lead to the significant improvement of efficiency as compared with SOFC system.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07c
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• pp.1707-1709
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• 1996

For the improvement of the performance and life time of phosphoric acid fuel cell, the management of electrolyte in the electrocatalyst layer and electrolyte matrix in the cell structure is very important. Porous bipolar pinto structure, that is known as an advanced type, is generally used for the storage of electrolyte in the cell. In this paper, the single cell was made of the electrode by coating directly electrocatalyst layer on porous bipolar plate. The single cell showed $186\;mA/cm^2$ at 0.6V. This performance is similar to the performance of the conventional nonporous plate single cell. The technology of porous plate single cell could be directly used to the fabrication of stack in order to improve the performance and life time of phosphoric acid fuel cell.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2019

The objective of this study was to investigate performance characteristics of thermal management system(TMS) in a fuel cell electric vehicle with 100kW Fuel Cell(FC) system. In order to build up analytic modelling for TMS, each component was installed and tested under various operating conditions, such as water pump, radiator, 3-Way valve, COD heater, and FC stack etc. and as the results of them, correlations reflecting component's characteristics with flow rate, air velocity were developed. Developed analytic modelling was carried out under various operating conditions on the road. To verify modelling's accuracy, after prediction for optimum coolant flow rate was fulfilled under certain operating conditions, such as FC system, water pump speed, opening of 3-way valve, and pipe resistance, analytic and experimental values were compared and good agreement was shown. In order to predict cold-start operating performance for analytic modelling, coolant temperature variation was analyzed with $-20^{\circ}C$ ambient temperature and duration was predicted to rise in optimum temperature for FC. Because there is appropriate temperature difference between inlet and outlet of FC stack to operate FC system properly, related analysis was performed with respect to power consumption for TMS and heat rejection rate and performance map was depicted along with FC operating conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.155-161
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• 2005

In this paper, commercial CFD program FLUENT v5.3 is used for simulation of MCFC stack. Besides using conservation equations included in FLUENT by default, mass change, mole fraction change and heat added or removed due to electrochemical reactions and water gas shift reaction are considered by adding several equations using user defined function. The stacks calculated are 6 and 25 kW class coflow stack which are composed of 20 and 40 unit cells respectively. Simulation results showed that pressure drop took place in the direction of gas flow, and the pressure drop of cathode side is more larger than that of anode side. And the velocity of cathode gas decreased along with the gas flow direction, but the velocity of anode gas increased because of the mass and volume changes by the chemical reactions in each electrodes. Simulated temperature profile of the stack tended to increase along with the gas flow direction and it showed similar results with the experimental data. Water gas shift reaction was endothermic at the gas inlet side but it was exothermic at the outlet side of electrode respectively. Therefore water gas shift reaction played a role in increasing temperature difference between inlet and outlet side of stack. This results suggests that the simulation of large scale commercial stacks need to consider water gas shift reaction.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.202-207
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• 2009

A 75kW MCFC stack with the reactive area of 9,600cm$^2$ has been operated and validated in Boryeong thermal power plant. The 75kW MCFC stack was installed at the end of November 28, 2008 and started initial operation on December 23, 2008 after pretreated for about 20 days. At initial load operation, the stack showed the Open Circuit Voltage of 137V, which approaches the theoretical value. At the early stage of rated power operation, the stack displayed the voltage of 104V at the current of 754A and reached the maximum generating power of 78.5kW DC. This stack has been operated for 2,890 hours until April, 2009. In addition, the operation time of rated power records 1890 hours. This Operating result is scheduled to be reflected the design of l25kW stack.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.609-615
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• 2011

A 5 kW class SOFC system for cogeneration power units was consisted of a hot box part and cold BOPs. High temperature components such as a stack, a fuel reformer, a catalytic combustor, and heat exchanges are arranged in the bot box considering their operating temperatures for the system efficiency. The hot box was made of ceramic boards for the thermal insulation. A 5 kW class SOFC stack was composed of 2 sub-modules and each module had 64 cells with $15{\times}15cm^2$ area and stainless steel interconnects. The 5 kW class SOFC system was operated with a hydrogen and a city gas. With a hydrogen, the total power of the stacks was about 7.1 kWDC and electrical efficiency was about 49.3% at 80 A. With a city gas, the total power of the stacks was about 5.7 $kW_{DC}$ and electrical efficiency was about 38.8% at 60 A. Under self-sustained operating condition, the system efficiency including a power conditioning loss and a consumed power by BOPs was about 30.2%.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.527-535
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• 2017

Heat management is one of the most critical issues in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) installed inside the fuel cell power pack of a fuel cell battery hybrid UPS. If the heat generated by the chemical reaction in the fuel cell is not rapidly removed, the durability and performance of the fuel cell may be affected, which may shorten its lifetime. Therefore, the objective of this study is to select and propose a proper cooling method for the fuel cells used in the fuel cell power pack of a UPS. In order to find the most appropriate cooling method, the various design factors affecting the cooling performance were studied. The numerical analysis was performed by a commercial program, i.e., COMSOL Multiphysics. Firstly, the surface temperature of the 1 kW class fuel cell stack with the cooling fans placed at the top was compared with the one with the cooling fans placed at the bottom. Various rotation speeds of the cooling fan, viz. 2,500, 3,000, 3,500, and 4,000 RPM, were tested to determine the proper cooling fan speed. In addition, the influence of the inhaled air flow rate was investigated by changing the porous area of the grille, which is the entrance of the air flowing from the outside to the inside of the power pack. As a result, it was found that for the operating conditions of the 1 kW class PEMFC to be acceptable, the cooling fan was required to have a minimum rotating speed of 3500 RPM to maintain the fuel cell surface temperature within an acceptable range. The results of this study can be effectively applied to the development of thermal management technology for the fuel cells inside the fuel cell power pack of a UPS.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.361-364
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• 2009

KEPRI has studied planar type SOFC stacks using anode-supported single cells and kW class co-generation systems for residential power generation. A 1kW class SOFC system consisted of a hot box part, a cold BOP part and a water reservoir. A hot box part contains a SOFC stack made up of 48 cells with $10{\times}10cm^2$ area and ferritic stainless steel interconnectors, a fuel reformer, a catalytic combustor and heat exchangers. Thermal management and insulation system were especially designed for self-sustainable operation. A cold BOP part was composed of blowers, pumps, a water trap and system control units. When a 1kW class SOFC system was operated at $750^{\circ}C$ with hydrogen, the stack power was 1.2kW at 30 A and 1.6kW at 50A. Turning off an electric furnace, the SOFC system was operated using hydrogen and city gas without any external heat source. Under self-sustainable operation conditions, the stack power was about 1.3kW with hydrogen and 1.2kW with city gas respectively. The system also recuperated heat of about 1.1kW by making hot water. Recently KEPRI developed stacks using $15{\times}15cm^2$ cells and tested them. KEPRI will develop a 5 kW class CHP system using $15{\times}15cm^2$ stacks by 2010.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.303-311
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• 2019

Reversible solid oxide fuel cell (RSOFC) has become a prospective device for energy storage and hydrogen production. Many studies have been conducted around the world focusing on system efficiency improvement and realization. The system should have not only high efficiency but also a certain level of simplicity for stable operation. External waste steam utilization was proved to remarkably increase the efficiency at solid oxide electrolysis system. In this study, RSOFC system coupled with waste steam was proposed and optimized in term of simplicity and efficiency. Ejector for fuel recirculation is selected due to its simple design and high stability. Three system configurations using ejector for fuel recirculation were investigated for performance of design condition. In parametric study, the system efficiencies at different current density were analyzed. The system configurations were simulated using validated lumped model in EBSILON(R) program. The system components, balance of plants, were designed to work in both electrolysis and fuel cell modes, and their off-design characteristics were taken into account. The base case calculation shows that, the system with suction pump results in slightly lower efficiency but stack can be operated more stable with same inlet pressure of fuel and air electrode.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.859-867
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• 2011

The cold start problem is one of major obstacles to overcome for the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles. However, the cold start characteristics of fuel cell systems are very complicated since various phenomena, i.e. ice-blocking, electro-chemical reactions, heat transfer, and defrosting of BOP components, are involved in them. This paper presents a framework to approach the problem at a full stack scale using Axiomatic Design (AD). It was characterized in terms of Functional Requirements (FRs) and Design Parameters (DPs) while their relations were established in a design matrix. Considering the design matrix, the endplates should have low thermal conductivity and capacity without increase in weight or decrease in structural stiffness. Consequently, composite sandwich endplates were proposed and examined both through finite element analyses and experiments simulating cold start conditions. From the examinations, it was found that the composite sandwich endplates significantly contributed to improving the cold start characteristics of PEMFC.