• Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.48-52
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• 2011

The KEPCO Research Institute has developed Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell(MCFC) since 1993. Recently, an 125-kW MCFC system was operated at Boryeong thermal power plant, Korea from December, 2009 to March, 2010, This system is composed of an 125-kW stack, mechanical balance of plant (MBOP), and Power Conditioning System. The stack has 200 unit cells of which effective area is 10,000 cm2. Especially, MBOP is mainly made up of ejector and catalytic combustor which help this system to be supplied with cathode inlet gas using anode tail gas and fresh air. After the pretreatment of this system was performed for about 20 days, initial load operation was performed at January. 2010. Moreover, this system had been operated for 3,270 hours.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.149-155
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• 2009

In this work a numerical study to find the characteristics of the internal flow and mixing process has been conducted in a static mixer used in the system of catalytic combustor of the fuel cell power plant. After introducing the model description and final governing equations the present numerical approach is applied to the analysis of static mixer, which may have one or more helical elements inside the circular tube by changing such various parameters as incoming mass flow rates and the number of helical elements. The results show that although the static mixer is efficient in mixing fuel and air, more optimization processes are required to achieve the appropriate mixing characteristics in front of the honeycomb type catalytic combustor used in the MCFC power plant

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1989.07a
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• pp.9-11
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• 1989

A phosphoric acid fuel cell ( PAFC ) power plant with a capacity of SKW a.c has been constructed for R & D purposes at KIER under a sponsorship of KEPCO. The PAFC power plant has successfully generated an electricity for the first time in Korea. In the paper, the plant configuration and the experimental results ace reported.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.369-376
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• 2017

Temperature and humidity regulations of an open-cathode PEM fuel cell with balance of plant (BOP) are developed in this study. The axial fan, a bubble humidifier, set of solenoid valves and a controller are used to perform temperature and humidity control simultaneously. A fuzzy controller is designed, and it shows its superiority in real-time controlling for strong non-linear dynamical fuel cell system. The axial fan speed is used for temperature control and solenoid valve on/off signal of the bubble humidifier is used for humidity control. The axial fan speed is controlled to keep the fuel cell temperature within the desired point. Meanwhile, the bubble humidifier is utilized to moisture hydrogen to manage the water content of membrane. The results show that the proposed fuzzy controller effectively increases the output power of 10% for a PEM fuel cell.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.419-424
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• 2010

The 125kW external reforming (ER) type molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) system for developing a commercial prototype has been operated at Boryeong thermal power plant site since the end of 2009. The system consists of 125kW stack with $10,000 cm^2$ effective area, mechanical balance of plant (MBOP) with anode recycle system, and electrical balance of plant (EBOP). The 125kW MCFC stack installed in December, 2009 has been operated from January, 2010 after 20 days pre-treatment. The stack open circuit voltage (OCV) was 214V at initial load operation, which approaches the thermodynamically theoretical voltage. The stack voltage remained stable range from 160V to 180V at the maximum generating power of 120 kW DC. The stack has been operated for 3,270 hours and operated at rated power for 1,200 hours.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.423-431
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• 2011

Recentincreasing awareness of the environmental damage caused by the $CO_2$ emission of fossil fuelsstimulated the interest in alternative and renewable sources of energy. Fuel cell is a representative example of hydrogen energy utilization. In this study, Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell system is simulated by using $Aspen^{TM}$. Stack model is consisted of equilibrium reaction equations using $ACM^{TM}$(Aspen Custom Modeler). Balance of process of fuel cell system is developed in Aspen $Plus^{TM}$ and simulated at steady-state. Analysis of performance of the system is carried out by using sensitivity analysis tool with main operating parameters such as current density, S/C ratio, and fuel utilization and recycle ratio.In Aspen $Dynamics^{TM}$, dynamics of MCFC system is simulated with PID control loops. From the simulation, we proposed operation range which generated maximum power and efficiency in MCFC power plant.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.128.2-128.2
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• 2010

For stationary 1kW-class fuel cell systems to be used widely, it is essential to achieve dramatic improvements in system durability as well as cost reduction. In order to address this engineering challenge, it is important to develop innovative technologies associated with BOP components. According to this background, in 2009, the Korean Government and "Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning(KETEP)" launched into the strategic development project of BOP technology for practical applications and commercializations of stationary fuel cell systems, named "Technology Development on Cost Reduction of BOP Components for 1kW Stationary Fuel Cell Systems to Promote Green-Home Dissemination Project". The objectives of this project are to develop fundamental technologies to meet these requirements, and to improve the performance and functionality of BOP components with reasonable price. The project consortium consists of Korea's leading fuel cell system manufacturers, BOP component manufacturers which technologically specialized, and several research institutions. This paper is to provide a summary of the project, as well as the achievements made through the 1st period of the project(2009~2010). Several prototypes of BOPs - Cathode air blowers, burner air blowers, preferential oxidation air blowers, fuel blowers, cooling water pumps, reformer water pumps, heat recovery pumps, mass flow meters, valves and power conditioning systems - had been developed through this project in 2010. As results of this project, it is expected that a technological breakthrough of these BOP components will result in a substantial system cost reduction.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.49-62
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• 2016

In this study, a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system model including balance of plant (BOP) for building electric power generation is developed to study the effect of operating conditions on the system efficiency and power output. SOFC system modeled in this study consists of three heat-exchangers, an external reformer, burner, and two blowers. A detailed computational cell model including internal reforming reaction is developed for a planer SOFC stack which is operated at intermediate temperature (IT). The BOP models including an external reformer, heat-exchangers, a burner, blowers, pipes are developed to predict the gas temperature, pressure drops and flow rate at every component in the system. The SOFC stack model and BOP models are integrate to estimate the effect of operating parameters on the performance of the system. In this study, the design of experiment (DOE) is used to compare the effects of fuel flow rate, air flow rate, air temperature, current density, and recycle ratio of anode off gas on the system efficiency and power output.

• Architectural research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.21-29
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• 2019

Recent years in Korea, some new developed buildings are only using electricity as power for heating, cooling, bathing and even cooking which means except electricity, there is no natural gas or other kinds of energy used in such kind of building. In vehicle industry area, scientists already invented electric vehicle as an environment friendly vehicle; after that, in architecture design and construction field, buildings only using electricity appeared; the curiosity of the environment impact of energy consumption by such kind of building lead me to do this research. In general, electricity is known as a clean energy resource reasoned by it is noncombustible energy resource; however, although there is no environmental pollution by using electricity, electricity generation procedure in power plant may cause huge amount of environment pollution; especially, electricity generation from combusting coal in power plant could emit enormous air pollutants to the air. In this research, the yearly amount of air pollution by energy using under traditional way in research target building that is using natural gas for heating, bathing and cooking and electricity for lighting, equipment and cooling is compared with yearly amount of air pollution by only using electricity as power in the building; result shows that building that only uses electricity emits much more air pollutants than uses electricity and natural gas together in the building. According to the amount of air pollutants comparison result between two different energy application types in the building, residential SOFC (Solid oxide fuel cell) is simulated to apply in this building for decreasing environment pollution of the building; furthermore, high load factor could lead high efficiency of SOFC, in the scenario of simulating applying SOFC in the building, SOFC is shared by two or three households in spring and autumn to increase efficiency of the SOFC. In sum, this research is trying to demonstrate electricity is a conditioned environment friendly energy resource; in the meanwhile, SOFC is simulated efficiently applying in the building only using electricity as power to decrease the large amount of air pollutants by energy using in the building. Energy consumption of the building is analyzed by calibrated commercial software Design Builder; the calibrated mathematical model of SOFC is referred from other researcher's study.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1998.07a
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• pp.55-57
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• 1998

Molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) power plant is expected to be one of the most promising future power generation system for the electric utilities because of its high efficiency, environmental suitability and capability of using coal as fuel. To get such attractive performance, it is necessary to consider optimizing operation and gas recycling system. This paper describes the simulation results of 7 kW MCFC stack in KEPRI and the effects of the three possible gas recycling operations, i.e. cathode gas recycling, anode gas recycling, anode gas recycling with catalytic burner.