• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.374-379
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• 1996

Effects of reactant gas flow rates and starvation on phosphoric acid fuel cell performance were studied. As the reactant gas flow rates increased, the cell performance increased and then the cell maintained constant performance. The optimum flow rates of hydrogen, oxygen and air under galvanostatic condition of 150 mA/cm$_{2}$ are found to be 5cc/min cm$_{2}$ 5cc/min cm$_{2}$ and 15cc/min cm$_{2}$ at room temperature and 1 atm, respectively. Also the open circuit voltage of single cell decreased with increasing oxygen flow rate due probably to the decreased probably to the decreased oxygen pressure in the cathode side. Hydrogen and oxygen starvation resulted in voltage loss of about 5mV and 0-2mV, respectively. The voltage loss was independent of starvation time. These results were discussed from point of view of electrochemical reaction of the cell. (author). 9 refs., 8 figs.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.157-160
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• 2007

The catalyst layer of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell is a mixture of polymer, carbon, and platinum. The characteristics of the catalyst layer play critical role in determining the performance of the PEM fuel cell. This research investigates the role of catalyst layer composition using a Central Composite Design (CCD) experiment with two factors which are Nafion content and carbon loading while the platinum catalyst surface area is held constant. For each catalyst layer composition， polarization curves are measured to evaluate cell performance at common operating conditions, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), and Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) are then applied to investigate the cause of the observed variations in performance. The results show that both Nafion and carbon content significantly affect MEA performance. The ohmic resistance and active catalyst area of the cell do not correlate with catalyst layer composition, and observed variations in the cell resistance and active catalyst area produced changes in performance that were not significant relative to compositions of catalyst layers.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.59-62
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• 2006

Formability is requested to successfully develop of a metal bipolar plate for mass production. From this point of view, wider channel and land width is more helpful to improve formability. But the performance of the fuel cell can be affected by its channel and land shape. So it is very important to select proper channel and land shape not to deteriorate the fuel cell performance. In this work, 3-dimensional, non-isothermal numerical simulation was performed to analyse the effects of channel and land width on the fuel cell performance. 3 types of straight channel were selected for the numerical simulation. The simulation results reveal that wide channel and land width lower fuel cell performance and decrease voltage at a high current density region. Water activity, temperature, oxygen concentration distributions were investigated to find the reasons of performance degradation. The results show that wide channel and land width give an bad effect on fuel cell performance because of low cool ins efficiency and lack of oxygen gas under the land.

• Carbon letters
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.121-125
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• 2003

The Pt-Ru/Carbon as an anode catalyst supported on the commercial activated carbon (AC) having high surface area and micropore was characterized for application of Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC). The Pt-Ru/AC anode catalyst used in this experiment showed the performance of $600\;mA/cm^2$ current density at 0.3 V. The borohydride reduction process using $NaBH_4$, denoted as a process A, showed much higher current and power densities than process B prepared by changing the reduction and washing process of process A. The particle sizes are strongly affected by the reduction process than the specific surface area of raw active carbon and the sizes are almost constant when the specific surface area of carbon are over than the $1200\;m^2/g$. Smaller particle size of catalyst and more narrow intercrystalite distance increased the performance of DMFC.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.160-168
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• 2003

The co-firing processes for the supported type planar solid oxide fuel cell were investigated. A flat cell of $7.7${\times}$10.8\textrm{cm}^2$ was fabricated successfully by the co-firing process, in which green films were co-sintered in the forms of two layers of anode/electrolyte or of three layers of anode/electrolyte/cathode with gas distributor. A co-fired cell of two layers yielded a power of 200 ㎽/$\textrm{cm}^2$ at 608 ㎷. Its performance loss was mainly due to iR drop in the anodic gas distributor, which was attributed to poor contact between anodic gas distributor and current collector. The performance in the co-fired cell of three layers was much lower than that of two layers, which resulted from the large iR drop and activation overvoltage at the cathodic side. In the co-fired cell of two layers, the impedance analysis indicated that the performance decay during cell operation is due to both anode overvoltage and iR drop at anode side. Also the electrode reaction of the co-fired two layers' cell is considered to be controlled by activation overvoltage within the low current of 50 ㎃.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.554-559
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• 2015

Single cell of PEMFC (polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell) is composed of bipolar plates, gasket, GDL and the MEA. Bipolar plate's function is the collecting electricity, helping oxygen/hydrogen gas diffuse evenly and draining the water and heat. In this work, we have conducted experiments to low contact resistance and improve the performance of a $25cm^2$ single cell by using metal forms. We have following experimental cases: 1) Conventional graphite serpentine channel bipolar plate; 2) Channel-less bipolar plate with nickel(Ni) based metal foam which coated by various materials. We focused the difference in contact resistance and performance of the single cell with metal foam depending on various coating materials. The experimental results show the similar performance of single cells between with serpentine channel bipolar plates and with channel-less bipolar plate using metal foams. In addition, single cell with metal foam shows potential to higher performance than conventional channel.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.283-289
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• 2010

A two-dimensional isothermal model has been employed for numerical simulations of a high temperature hydrogen fuel cell with proton exchange membrane. The model is validated with existing experimental data and used for examination on the effects of various operating conditions on the fuel cell performance. The present numerical results show that the cell performance increases with increasing exchange current density, ion conductivity of the membrane, inlet gas flow rate as well as operating pressure. Also, higher porosity of gas diffusion layer (GDL) results in higher cell performance due to enhancement of the diffusion through the GDL, where the cathode GDL porosity more influences on the performance as compared with the anode one.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.257-264
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• 2011

This study discribes performance of DEFC (Direct Ethanol Fuel Cell) utilized bio-ethanol based on fruit wastes. To produce the bio-ethanol, fruit wastes were treated at temperature $120^{\circ}C$ and 90minutes in acid pre-treatment. After pre-treatment was done, alcohol fermentation process was running. Initial alcohol concentration was 5%. Using the multi coloumn distillation system, more than 95% ethanol was distilled and each component of bio-ethanol was analyzed. In DEFC performance test, it was revealed that cell performance was much higher than that of ethanol. Comparing ethanol with mixed fuel (bio-ethanol (10%) + ethanol (90%)), the performance of ethanol was higher than that of mixed fuel. Even though the bio-ethanol from the fruit wastes is corresponded with transport ethanol standards, it thought that organic matter in bio-ethanol could be negative effect on fuel cell.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.320-325
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• 2013

TUnitized reversible fuel cells (URFC) combine the functionality of a fuel cell and electrolyzer in one unitized device. For a URFC with proton exchange membrane, a titanium (Ti)-felt is applied to the gas diffusion layer (GDL) substrate at the oxygen electrode, and additionally titanium (Ti)-powders and TiN-powders are loaded in the GDL substrate as a micro porous layer (MPL). Double porous layer with TiN MPL was not acceptable for the URFC because both of fuel cell performance and electrolysis performance are degraded. The double porous layer with Ti-powder loading in the Ti-felt substrate influence rearly for the electrolysis performance. In contrast, the change of pore-size distribution brings a significant improvement of fuel cell performance under fully humidification conditions. This fact indicates that the hydrophobic meso-pores in the GDL play an important role for mass transport.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.68-71
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• 2003

The performance of the Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) using multi-layer electrode, which prepared by various anode catalysts and Nafion membranes, was studied for reducing the amount of the metal catalyst loaded in the MEA system. The amount of the catalyst used in this experiment was $3-4 mg/cm^2$ in cathode and $1-2 mg/cm^2$ in anode, respectively. The best performance was to be $230 mS/cm^2$ of MEA3 at $90^{\circ}C$ and 2 bar in this experiment. However, the overall performance of the DMFC was maintained almost the same compared to the general commercial catalyst systems.