• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.3279-3284
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• 2012

Poly(benzimidazole-co-benzoxazole)s (PBI-co-PBO) are synthesized by polycondensation reaction with 3,3'-diaminobenzidine, terephthalic acid and 3,3'-dihydroxybenzidine or 4,6-diaminoresorcinol in polyphosphoric acid (PPA). All polymer membranes are prepared by the direct casting method (in-situ fabrication). The introduction of benzoxazole units (BO units) into a polymer backbone lowers the basic property and $H_3PO_4$ doping level of the copolymer membranes, resulting in the improvement of mechanical strength. The proton conductivity of $H_3PO_4$ doped PBI-co-PBO membranes decrease as a result of adding amounts of BO units. The maximum tensile strength reaches 4.1 MPa with a 10% molar ratio of BO units in the copolymer. As a result, the $H_3PO_4$ doped PBI-co-PBO membranes could be utilized as alternative proton exchange membranes in high temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cells.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.13 no.1 s.38
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• pp.57-61
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• 2006

Fuel cells are direct current (DC) power generators. They generate electricity through an electrochemical process that converts the energy stored in a fuel directly into electricity. Fuel cells have many benefits, which produce no particulate matter, nitrogen or sulfur oxides. And they have few moving parts and produce little or no noise. When fueled by hydrogen, they yield only heat and water as byproducts. Their wide application can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign sources of petroleum. This paper is studied on a high efficiency power conditioning system (PCS) applied to the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) generation system. This paper is designed to a novel PCS circuit topology of high efficiency. Some experimental results of the proposed PCS is confirmed to the validity of the analytical results.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.50-60
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• 2013

High temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) using phosphoric acid (PA) doped polybenzimidazole (PBI) membranes have been concentrated as one of solutions to the limits with traditional low temperature PEMFCs. However, the amount of reported experimental data is not enough to catch the operational characteristics correlated with cell performance and durability. In this study, design of experiments (DOE) based operational optimization method for high temperature PEMFCs has been proposed. Response surface method (RSM) is very useful to effectively analyze target system's characteristics and to optimize operating conditions for a short time. Thus RSM using central composite design (CCD) as one of methodologies for design of experiments (DOE) was adopted. For this work, the statistic models which predict the performance and degradation rate with respect to the operating conditions have been developed. The developed performance and degradation models exhibit a good agreement with experimental data. Compared to the existing arbitrary operation, the expected cell lifetime and average cell performance during whole operation could be improved by optimizing operating conditions. Furthermore, the proposed optimization method could find different new optimal solutions for operating conditions if the target lifetime of the fuel cell system is changed. It is expected that the proposed method is very useful to find optimal operating conditions and enhance performance and durability for many other types of fuel cell systems.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.34-41
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• 2014

The goal of this study is to investigate some crack behaviors which affect the crack propagation angle at the planar solid oxide fuel cell with cracks under the fabricating and operating temperature and analyze the stresses by 3 steps processing on the solid oxide fuel cell. Currently, there are lots of researches of the performance improvement for fuel cells, and also for the more powerful efficiency. However, the planar solid oxide fuel cell has demerits which the electrode materials have much brittle properties and the thermal condition during the operating process. It brings some problems which have lower reliability owing to the deformation and cracks from the thermal expansion differences between the electrolyte, cathode and anode electrodes. Especially the crack in the corner of the electrodes gives rise to the fracture and deterioration of the fuel cells. Thus it is important to evaluate the behavior of the cracks in the solid oxide fuel cell for the performance and safety operation. From the results, we showed the stress distributions from the cathode to the anode and the effects of the edge crack in the electrolyte and the slant crack in the anode. Futhermore the crack propagation angle was expected according to the crack length and slant angle and the variation of the stress intensity factors for the each fracture mode was shown.

• Korean Journal of Hazardous Materials
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.77-86
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• 2018

Interest in renewable energy is increasing for eco-friendly use of energy, and fuel cells are being used in various ways such as houses and buildings as power generation methods that have low emissions such as $NO_X$ and $CO_2$. As the supply of fuel cells expands, more and more boilers are installed in the existing buildings, but safety management is not being performed properly. Therefore, in this study, a prior study was conducted on the status of fuel cell-boiler complex installation and related criteria, and the risk factors were analyzed according to the installation environment and structure. Based on these standards, the safety performance of the fuel cell-boiler combined installation is assessed by conducting a demonstration using the starting product of the simulated operation to derive the installation criteria (proposal) for the fuel cell-boiler combined installation. The installation criteria (proposal) include the construction and connection method of the piping according to the fuel cell-boiler complex installation.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.26-33
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• 2012

Phosphoric acid-doped poly (2,5-benzimidazole) (DABPBI) was prepared by condensation polymerization of 3,4-diaminobenzoic acid for high temperature proton electrolyte membrane fuel cells. The membranes were casted directly using a hot-press unit and characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, conductivity measurement, scanning electron microscopy and tensile test. The proton conductivities of DABPBI are observed to be 0.062 and 0.018 $S{\cdot}cm^{-1}$ under 30 and 1% relative humidity, respectively at a temperature of $120^{\circ}C$ which is appreciably higher than that of Nafion 115 under similar conditions. The DABPBI membrane has demonstrated excellent thermo- mechanical properties and proton conductivity suggesting its suitability as a high temperature membrane.

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.185-185
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• 2006

The performances of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), direct formic acid fuel cell (DFAFC) and direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) with sulfonated poly(ether sulfone) membrane are reported. Pt/C was coated on the membrane directly to fabricate a MEA for PEMFC operation. A single cell test was carried out using $H_2/air$ gases as fuel and oxidant. A current density of $730\;mA/cm^2$ at 0.60 V was obtained at $70^{\circ}C$. Pt-Ru (anode) and Pt (cathode) were coated on the membrane for DMFC operations. It produced $83\;mW/cm^2$ of maximum power density. The sulfonated poly(ether sulfone) membrane was also used for DFAFC operation under several different conditions. It showed good cell performances for several different kinds of polymer electrolyte fuel cell applications.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.736-745
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• 2009

Fuel cells convert a fuel together with oxygen in a highly efficient electrochemical reaction to electricity and water. Since the electrochemical reaction in the fuel cell stack dose not generate any noise, Fuel cell systems are expected to operated much quieter than combustion engines. However, the tonal noise and the broad band noise caused by a centrifugal compressor and an electric motor cause which is required to feed the ambient air to the cathode of the fuel cell stack with high pressure. In this study, the multi-camber perforated muffler is used to reduce noise. We propose optimized muffler model using an axiomatic design method that optimizes the parameters of perforated muffler while keeping the volume of muffler minimized.

• 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.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.197-204
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• 2008

DMFC(Direct Methanol Fuel Cell) is one of promising candidates for power sources of small mobile IT devices like notebook, cell phone, and so on. Efficient operation of fuel cell system is very important for long-sustained power supply because of limited fuel tank size. It is necessary to investigate operation characteristics of fuel cell stack for optimal control of DMFC system. The generated voltage was modeled according to various operating condition; methanol concentration, stack temperature, and load current. It is inevitable for methanol solution at anode to cross over to cathode through MEA(membrane electrode assembly), which reduces the system efficiency and increases fuel consumption. In this study, optimal operation conditions are proposed by analyzing stack performance model, cross-over phenomenon, and system efficiency.