• Advances in Energy Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.53-78
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• 2013

Methane carbon dioxide reforming (MCDR) is a promising way of utilizing greenhouse gas for hydrogen-rich fuel production. Compared with other types of reactors, Compact Reformers (CRs) are efficient for fuel processing. In a CR, a thin solid plate is placed between two porous catalyst layers to enable efficient heat transfer between the two catalyst layers. In this study, the physical and chemical processes of MCDR in a CR are studied numerically with a 2D numerical model. The model considers the multi-component gas transport and heat transfer in the fuel channel and the porous catalyst layer, and the MCDR reaction kinetics in the catalyst layer. The finite volume method (FVM) is used for discretizing the governing equations. The SIMPLEC algorithm is used to couple the pressure and the velocity. Parametrical simulations are conducted to analyze in detail the effects of various operating/structural parameters on the fuel processing behavior.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.38-38
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• 2017

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.104-109
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• 2006

Improvements in internal combustion engine and aftertreatment technologies are needed to meet future environmental quality goals. Plasmatron fuel converters provide a rapid response, compact means to transform a wide range of hydrocarbon fuels (including gasoline, natural gas and diesel fuel) into hydrogen-rich gas. Hydrogen-rich gas can be used as an additive to provide NOx reductions of more than 80% in diesel engine vehicles by enabling very lean operation or heavy exhaust engine recirculation. For diesel engines, use of compact plasmatron reformers to produce hydrogen-rich gas for the regeneration of NOx absorber/absorbers and particulate traps for diesel engine exhaust after-treatment could provide significant advantages. Recent tests of conversion of diesel fuel to hydrogen-rich gas using a low current plasmatron fuel converter with non-equilibrium plasma features are described.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.731-734
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• 2009

KIER has been developed a compact and highly efficient fuel processor which is one of the key component of the residential PEM fuel cells system. The fuel processor uses methane steam reforming to convert natural gas to a mixture of water, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and unreacted methane. Then carbon monoxide is converted to carbon dioxide in water-gas-shift reactor and preferential oxidation reactor. A start-up time of the fuel processor is about 1h and CO concentration among the final product is maintained less than 5 vol. ppm. To achieve high thermal efficiency of 80% on a LHV basis, an optimal thermal network was designed. Internal heat exchange of the fuel processor is so efficient that the temperature of the reformed gas and the flue gas at the exit of the fuel processor remains less than $100^{\circ}C$. A compact design considering a mixing and distribution of the feed was applied to reduce the reactor volume. The current volume of the fuel processor is 17L with insulation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.330-338
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• 2016

The U-Zr or U-TRU-Zr cylindrical metallic fuel slug used in fast reactors is known to swell significantly and to grow during irradiation. In neutronics simulations of metallic-fueled fast reactors, it is assumed that the slug has swollen and contacted cladding, and the bonding sodium has been removed from the fuel region. In this research, a realistic burnup-dependent fuel-swelling simulation was performed using Monte Carlo code McCARD for a single-batch compact sodium-cooled breed-and-burn reactor by considering the fuel-swelling behavior reported from the irradiation test results in EBR-II. The impacts of the realistic burnup-dependent fuel swelling are identified in terms of the reactor neutronics performance, such as core lifetime, conversion ratio, axial power distribution, and local burnup distributions. It was found that axial fuel growth significantly deteriorated the neutron economy of a breed-and-burn reactor and consequently impaired its neutronics performance. The bonding sodium also impaired neutron economy, because it stayed longer in the blanket region until the fuel slug reached 2% burnup.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.238-238
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• 2000

In this paper, to increase the utilization of uranium resources contained in the spent fuel, the spent fuel is reused. for this, the spent fuel is dismantled or spent fuel rod is extracted from the spent fuel assembly. Therefore, to achieve the performance of compacting the spent fuel assembly, we proposed the controller consisting of adaptive and fuzzy with teaming algorithm. In order to show the performance of proposed algorithm compares, we compared the controller with conventional controller in plant.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.161-170
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• 2007

Metal fuel, which was abandoned in the 1960's in favor of oxide fuel, has since then proven to be a viable fast reactor fuel. Key discoveries allowed high burnup capability and excellent steady-state as well as off-normal performance characteristics. Metal fuel is a key to achieving inherent passive safety characteristics and compact and economic fuel cycle closure based on electrorefining and injection-casting refabrication.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.304-312
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• 2002

In this study, the performance of the $5Nm^3/hr$ compact type steam reformer which was developed for application of fuel cell or hydrogen station was evaluated in terms of gas process efficiency. For these purposes, reforming efficiency and total efficiency with system load change were analyzed. The reforming efficiency was calculated from the total molar flow of hydrogen output over total fuel flow input to the reformer and the burner on the higher heating value(HHV). In the case of the total efficiency, recovered heat at the heat recovery exchanger was considered. From the results, it was known that system performance was stable, because methane conversion showed the a slight decline which is about 2% though increasing system load to full. Reforming efficiency was increased from 20% to 58%, respectively as increasing system load from 10% to 90%. It was found that total efficiency was higher then reforming efficiency because of terms of heat recovered. As a results, it was known that total efficiency was increased form 75% to 83% at the 10% and 90% system load, respectively. From these results, it is concluded that compact steam reformer which is composed of stacking plate-type reactors is suitable to on-site hydrogen generator or to fuel cell application because of quick start within 1 hr and good performance.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.229-237
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• 2005

A new burner configuration for a compact fuel-cell reformer with a high-temperature air combustion concept was numerically studied. The burner was designed for a 40 $Nm^3/hr$ hydrogen-generated reformer using natural gas-steam reforming method. In order to satisfy the primary requirements for designing a reformer burner (uniform distribution of temperature along the fuel processor walls and minimum heat losses from the reformer), the features of the present burner configuration included 1) a self-regenerative burner for an exhaust-gas-recirculation to apply for the high-temperature air combustion concept, and 2) an annular-type shield for protecting direct contact of flame with the processor walls. For the injection velocities of the recirculated gas of 0.6-2.4 m/s, the recirculated gas temperature of 1000 K, and the recirculated oxygen mole fraction of 4%, the temperature distributions along the processor walls were found uniform within 100 K variation. Thus, the present burner configuration satisfied the requirement for reducing temperature gradients along the processor walls, and consequently demonstrated that the high-temperature air combustion concept could be applied to the practical fuel reformers for use of fuel cells. The uniformity of temperature distribution is enhanced as the amount of the recirculated gas increases.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.749-755
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• 2023

A new approximation method was proposed for treating the non-resonant spatial self-shielding effects of double heterogeneous region such as the double heterogeneous effect of VHTR fuel compact in the thermal energy range and that of BP compact with BISO. The method was developed based on the effective homogenization method and a spherical unit cell model with explicit coated layers and a matrix layer. The self-shielding factor was derived from the relation between the collision probabilities for a double heterogeneous compact and the effective cross section for the homogenized compact. First, the collision probabilities and transmission probabilities for all layers of the spherical model were calculated using conventional collision probability solver. Then, the effective cross section for the homogenized sphere cell representing the homogenized compact was obtained from the transmission probability calculated using the probability density function of a chord length. The verification calculations revealed that the proposed method can predict the self-shielding factor with a maximum error of 2.3% and the double heterogeneous effect with a maximum error of 200 pcm in the typical VHTR problems with various packing fractions and BP compact sizes.