• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.68-76
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• 2021

Climate change problems occur during the use of fossil fuel and the process of biogas production. Research continues to convert carbon dioxide and methane, the major causes of climate change, into high-quality energy sources. in order to present the performance potential for the novel plasma-recuperative burner reformer, the reforming characteristics for each variable were indentified. The optimal operating condition of was an O2/C ratio of 1.0 and a total gas supply of 20 L/min. At this time, CH4 conversion was 64%, H2 selectivity was 39%, and H2/CO ratio was 1.13, which were the results applicable to the solid oxide fuel cell fuel stack for RPG, or Residential Power Generator. Recirculation of reformed gas increases the amount of H2 and CO, which are combustible gases, especially the amount of H2. As a result, the H2 selectivity is improved, and high-quality gas can be produced.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.9-16
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• 2000

The growing concerns on environmental protection have been constantly demanding cleaner and more energy efficient vehicles without compromising any conveniences provided by the conventional vehicles. The recent significant advances in proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) fuel cell technology have shown the possibility of developing such vehicles powered by fuel cells. Several prototype fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) have been already developed by several major automotive manufactures, and all of the favorable features have been demonstrated in the public roads. FCEV is essentially a zero emission vehicle and allows to overcome the range limitation of the current battery electric vehicles. Being motivated by the laboratory and field demonstrations of the fuel cell technologies, variety of fuel cell alliances between fuel cell developers, automotive manufactures, petroleum companies and government agencies have been formed to expedite the realization of commercially viable FCEV. However, there still remain major issues that need to be overcome before it can be fully accepted by consumers. This paper describes the current fuel cell vehicle development status and the staggering challenges for the successful introduction of consumer acceptable FCEVS.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.58.2-58.2
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• 2012

Heavy hydrocarbon reforming is a core technology for "Dirty energy smart". Heavy hydrocarbons are components of fossil fuels, biomass, coke oven gas and etc. Heavy hydrocarbon reforming converts the fuels into $H_2$-rich syngas. And then $H_2$-rich syngas is used for the production of electricity, synthetic fuels and petrochemicals. Energy can be used efficiently and obtained from various sources by using $H_2$-rich syngas from heavy hydrocarbon reforming. Especially, the key point of "Dirty energy smart" is using "dirty fuel" which is wasted in an inefficient way. New energy conversion laboratory of KAIST has been researched diesel reforming for solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) as a part of "Dirty energy smart". Diesel is heavy hydrocarbon fuels which has higher carbon number than natural gas, kerosene and gasoline. Diesel reforming has difficulties due to the evaporation of fuels and coke formation. Nevertheless, diesel reforming technology is directly applied to "Dirty fuel" because diesel has the similar chemical properties with "Dirty fuel". On the other hand, SOFC has advantages on high efficiency and wasted heat recovery. Nippon oil Co. of Japan recently commercializes 700We class SOFC system using city gas. Considering the market situation, the development of diesel reformer has a great ripple effect. SOFC system can be applied to auxiliary power unit and distributed power generation. In addition, "Dirty energy smart" can be realized by applying diesel reforming technology to "Dirty fuel". As well as material developments, multidirectional approaches are required to reform heavy hydrocarbon fuels and use $H_2$-rich gas in SOFC. Gd doped ceria (CGO, $Ce_{1-x}Gd_xO_{2-y}$) has been researched for not only electrolyte materials but also catalysts supports. In addition, catalysts infiltrated electrode over porous $La_{0.8}Sr_{0.2}Ga_{0.8}Mg_{0.2}O_3-{\delta}$ and catalyst deposition at three phase boundary are being investigated to improve the performance of SOFC. On the other hand, nozzle for diesel atomization and post-reforming for light-hydrocarbons removal are examples of solving material problems in multidirectional approaches. Likewise, multidirectional approaches are necessary to realize "Dirty energy smart" like reforming "Dirty fuel" for SOFC.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.43 no.12 s.295
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• pp.812-822
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• 2006

This study amis to investigate the functional analysis of anode and cathode materials in Anode supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cell. The concentration polarization of single cell was investigated with CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) method for the case of the different morphology by using four types of unit cell and discussed to reduce the concentration polarization. The concentration polarization at anode side effected the voltage loss in Anode supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cell and increased contact areas between fuel gas and anode side could reduce the concentration polarization. For intermediate temperature operation, Anode-supported single cells with thin electrolyte layer of YSZ (Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia) were fabricated and short stacks were built and evaluated. We also developed diesel and methane autothermal reforming (ATR) reactors in order to provide fuels to SOFC stacks. Influences of the $H_2O/C$ (steam to carbon ratio), $O_2/C$ (oxygen to carbon ratio) and GHSV (Gas Hourly Space Velocity) on performances of stacks have been investigated. Performance of the stack operated with a diesel reformer was lower than with using hydrogen as a fuel due to lower Nernst voltage and carbon formation at anode side. The stack operated with a natural gas reformer showed similar performances as with using hydrogen. Effects of various reformer parameters such as $H_2O/C$ and $O_2/C$ were carefully investigated. It is found that $O_2/C$ is a sensitive parameter to control stack performance.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers P
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.592-596
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• 2009

DAFC(direct alcohol fuel cell) takes the same structure and operational principle with PEMFC(Proton exchange membrane fuel cell). However, DAFC, which uses liquid alcohol instead of hydrogen as fuel, is able to be used as a portable power for small-scaled electronic devices such as MP3, PMP, and mobile phone because alcohol is quite convenient steady-state compound to carry and store it. This paper presents the OCV(open circuit voltage) characteristics of the cases which are alcohol species and different weight rate of ethanol, respectively. The OCV of methanol fuel cell is slightly higher 0.2V than ethanol one, and 8% wt. rate ethanol is rated as the most appropriate fuel for DAFC.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.11
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• pp.745-753
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• 2016

Micro methanol-steam reformer for fuel cell can effectively produce hydrogen as reforming response to steam takes place in low temperature (less than $250^{\circ}C$). This study conducted numerical research on this reformer. First, study set wall temperature of the reformer at 100, 140, 180 and $220^{\circ}C$ while methanol conversion efficiency was set in 0, 0.072, 3.83 and 46.51% respectively. Then, porosity of catalyst was set in 0.1, 0.35, 0.6 and 0.85 and although there was no significant difference in methanol conversion efficiency, values of pressure drop were 4645.97, 59.50, 5.12 and 0.45 kPa respectively. This study verified that methanol-steam reformer rarely responds under the temperature of $180^{\circ}C$ and porosity does not have much effect on methanol conversion efficiency if the fluid flowing through reformer lowers activation energy by sufficiently contacting reformer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.611-612
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• 2006

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.19-22
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• 2007

In this study, we investigated operating characteristics of natural gas fuel processor for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). The fuel processor consists of a natural gas reformer, a water-gas shift reactor, a heat-exchanger and a burner, in which the overall integrated volume is exactly(exceptionally) small, namely, about 10L except outer insulation. The producted hydrogen is $1Nm^3/hr$ and the maximum thermal efficiency is ${\sim}76%$(low heating value) at full operating load. A compact and highly efficient $1Nm^3/hr$ class natural gas fuel processor was developed at UNISON is an advantage for application in residential PEMFCs co-generation systems.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.69-74
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• 2015

The study investigated numerically the heat transfer and chemical reaction characteristics of a methane-steam reforming by using a 3-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code (Fluent ver. 16.1). The fuel temperature and its species mole fractions were estimated for various Reynolds number in the reformer tube at different burner temperatures. The catalysts were modeled as the porous medium of nicrome in the reformer tube. We considered radiation effect as well as conduction and convective heat transfer because the methane-steam was reformed at very high temperature condition above 1000 K. For two different Reynolds numbers of 49,000 and 88,000 and the burner temperatures were in the range from 1,100 K to 1,300 K. At a low Reynolds number, the fuel temperature increased, leading to increase in hydrogen reforming. However, fuel temperature and hydrogen reforming decreased because of higher convective heat transfer from relatively low fuel temperature. Moreover, the hydrogen reforming also increased with burner temperature.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.618-626
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• 2017

Conventional high temperature reformers are not suitable for hybrid fuel cell systems that use waste heat as a heat source. So, development of a low temperature type reformer is needed. However, the analysis was conducted in two ways to increase the thermal efficiency, because of low reforming rate due to the low heat source. First, it is a way to ger thermal gain from the outside through partial insulation. In the case of one heat source tube and several heat source tubes, we analyzed the effect of partial heat insulation in some cases. Second, we found the most efficient arrangement of the heat source tubes by changing the location of the heat source tubes. The interpretation was carred out using the COMSOL Mutiphysics program.