• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.300-308
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• 2009

In a pursuit of the development of alternative mobile power sources with a high energy density, a planar and air-breathing PEMFCs with a new type of hydrogen cartridge which uses onsite $H_2$ generated from sodium borohydride ($NaBH_4$) hydrolysis have been investigated for use in advanced power systems. Two types of $H_2$ generation through $NaBH_4$ hydrolysis are available: (1) using organic acids such as sulphuric acid, malic acid, and sodium hydrogen carbonate in aqueous solution with solid $NaBH_4$ and (2) using solid selected catalysts such as Pt, Ru, CoB into the stabilized alkaline $NaBH_4$ solution. It might therefore be relevant at this stage to evaluate the relative competitiveness of the two methods mentioned above. The effects of flow rate of stabilized $NaBH_4$ solution, MEA (Membrane Electrode Assembly) improvement, and type and flow control of the catalytic acidic solution have been studied and the cell performances of the planar, air-breathing PEMFCs using $NaBH_4$ has been measured from aspects of power density, fuel efficiency, energy density, and fast response of cell. In our experiments, planar, air-breathing PEMFCs using $NaBH_4$ achieved to maximum power density of 128mW/$cm^2$ at 0.7V and energy efficiency of 46% and has many advantages such as low operating temperature, sustained operation at a high power density, compactness, the potential for low cost and volume, long stack life, fast star-up and suitability for discontinuous operation.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.670-677
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• 2012

Perovskite-type oxides such as doped barium zirconate ($BaZrO_3$) show high proton conductivity and chemical stability when they are exposed to hydrogen and water vapour containing atmospheres, thus it can be applicable to the hydrogen separation and the fuel cell electrolyte membranes. However the high temperature ($1700-1800^{\circ}C$) and long sintering times (24h) are generally required to prepare the fully densified $BaZrO_3$ pellets. These sintering conditions lead to the limitation of the grain size growth and the degradation of conductivity due to the acceleration of BaO evaporation at $1200^{\circ}C$. Here we demonstrate NiO-doped $BaZr_{0.85}Y_{0.15}O_{3-{\delta}}$ with lower calcination and sintering temperature, less experimental procedure and lower process cost than the conventional mixing method. The stoichiometry of $BaZr_{0.85}Y_{0.15}O_{3-{\delta}}$ was optimized by the control of excess amount of Ba (5mol%) to minimized BaO evaporation. We found that the crystal size of NiO-doped $BaZr_{0.85}Y_{0.15}O_{3-{\delta}}$ was increased with increase of calcination temperature from XRD analysis. NiO-doped $BaZr_{0.85}Y_{0.15}O_{3-{\delta}}$ powder was calcined at $1000^{\circ}C$ for 12h when its showed the highest conductivity of $3.3{\times}10^{-2}s/cm$.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.134-142
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• 2012

A bipolar plate is a major component of a fuel cell stack, which occupies 50~60% of the total weight and over 50% of the total cost of a typical fuel cell stack. In this study, a composite bipolar plate is designed and fabricated to develop a compact and light-weight direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) stack for a small-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) application. The composite bipolar plates for DMFCs are prepared by a compression molding method using resole type phenol resin as a binder and natural graphite and carbon black as a conductor filler and tested in terms of electrical conductivity, mechanical strength and hydrogen permeability. The flexural strength of 63 MPa and the in-plane electrical conductivities of 191 S $cm^{-1}$ are achieved under the optimum bipolar plate composition of phenol : 18%; natural graphite : 82%; carbon black : 3%, indicating that the composite bipolar plates exhibit sufficient mechanical strength, electrical conductivity and hydrogen permeability to be applied in a DMFC stack. A DMFC with the composite bipolar plate is tested and shows a similar cell performance with a conventional DMFC with graphite-based bipolar plate.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.99.2-99.2
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• 2011

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) supported on glass are widely used as substrates in PEC studies for photovoltaic hydrogen generation applications However, high sheet resistane ($10{\sim}15{\Omega}/cm^2$) and fragileness of glass-supported TCO substrates are the obstacles to produce the large area PEC cells. Such internal sheet resistance is detrimental to efficient collection of photogenerated majority charge carriers at the photoactive material and electrolyte interface. Moreover, these TCO substrates are very expensive and consume about 40~60% cost of the devices. Hence, a low sheet resistance of the substrate is a key point in improving the performance of PEC devices. Metallic substrates coated with a photoactive material would be a good choice for efficient charge collection. Such metal substrates based photanodes are best candidate for large-scale phtoelectrochemical water splitting for hydrogen generation. In this study, we report the enhanced PEC performance of $WO_3$ film on metal(chemical etched, bare) substrate. It is proposed that interface between $WO_3$ and the metal substrate is responsible for efficient charge transfer and demonstrated significant improvement in the photoelectrochmical performance. X-ray diffration and FESEM suduies reveled that $WO_3$ films are monoclinic, porous, polycrystalline with average grain size of ~50nm. Photocurrent of $WO_3$ prepared on metal substrates was measured in 0.5M $H_2SO_4$ electroyte under simulated $100mW/cm^2$ illumination.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.194-201
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• 2020

Recently, Type 2 high-pressure hydrogen storage tank is studied due to fast defect detection, easy manufacturing, and cost efficiency. Moreover, the dry winding a high-strength metal wire will make increased economic efficiency compare with the wet winding method and the carbon/glass fiber winding method. In this study, a theoretical study on the dry winding of a Type 2 high pressure hydrogen tank using a metal wire was done, and the equations of the total stress on the aligned and the staggered winding for the hoop winding were derived, and the following results were obtained by using these equations. As the diameter of the metal wire, the number of winding layers, and the outer diameter of the liner increase, the maximum stress decreases, but the difference between the maximum stress occurring in the aligned winding and the staggered winding increases. As the pressure increases, the thickness of the winding layer increases, but as the strength of the metal wire increases, the thickness of the winding layer decreases. In addition, regardless of the strength of the metal wire, the thickness of the winding layer of the staggered winding was about 13.4% thinner than that of the aligned winding.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.75-81
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• 2001

MCVD(modified chemical vapor deposition) used in making optical-fiber currently utilizes the hydrogen-oxygen burner as a energy supply source. To improve the productivity and to reduce the manufacturing cost of optical-fiber, a natural gas-oxygen burner has been developed. The manufacturing processes of optical-fiber consist of vapor deposition, collapse and drawing processes. Among these processes, the vapor deposition and the collapse processes are important in terms of improving the productivity and saving the production cost. The vapor deposition and collapse processes are performed by combustion heat and flame force supplied by a burner. So the flame force of the burner used in these processes is required to have an optimal and consistent value in order to allow uniform heating and collapse of quartz tube. In this regard, the momentum ratio of natural gas and oxygen has been optimally determined by modification of a burner and the inlet flow pass also has been modified.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.57-67
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• 2021

Photocatalytic green energy H2 production utilizing inexhaustible solar energy has been considered as a potential solution to problems of energy scarcity and environmental contamination. However, the design of a cost-effective photocatalyst using simple synthesis methodology is still a grand challenge. Herein, a low-cost transition metal, Cu-loaded one-dimensional TiO2 nanorods (Cu/TNR) were fabricated using an easy-to-use synthesis methodology for significant H2 production under simulated solar light. X-ray photoelectron spectral studies and electron microscopy measurements provide evidence to support the successful formation of the Cu/TNR catalyst under our experimental conditions. UV-vis DRS studies further demonstrate that introducing Cu on the surface of TNR substantially increases light absorption in the visible range. Notably, the Cu/TNR catalyst with optimum Cu content, achieved a remarkable H2 production with a yield of 39,239 µmol/g after 3 h of solar light illumination, representing 7.4- and 27.7-fold enhancements against TNR and commercial P25, respectively. The notably improved H2 evolution activity of the target Cu/TNR catalyst was primarily attributed to its excellent separation and efficiently hampered recombination of photoexcited electron-hole pairs. The Cu/TNR catalyst is, therefore, a potential candidate for photocatalytic green energy applications.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.2771-2778
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• 2009

This study was performed to solve the problem of the 2nd contamination and excessive treatment cost by determining proper quantity of hydrogen peroxide, iron catalyst, mixing method, and input mode that should be provided when Fenton oxidation (this is mostly applied to small contaminated areas such as service station sites) is applied to the excavated and diesel-contaminated soil. Soil artificially contaminated with 10000mg/kg of diesel was used for the experiment. In the batch test, diesel removal seemed to increase as the concentration of hydrogen peroxide increases. When iron catalyst was added, removal efficiency of diesel was much higher than the time when hydrogen peroxide was added solely. The removal efficiency showed greater when Fe(III) was added compared to Fe(II). Column experiment was executed on the basis of results of the batch test to investigate adequate reagent mixing and input methods. The highest efficiency was acquired in the case of separate input mode. Also, it was found that when inputting Fe(III) iron catalyst and separately inputting hydrogen peroxide after dividing the bundle in the column, removal efficiency was 92.8%, which was 9 times greater than that of the first method, 10.5%, when only hydrogen peroxide was added. Thus, it is expected that if the result of this research is applied to Fenton oxidation for the remediation of soil contaminated by diesel, the problem of the 2nd contamination and excessive treatment charge caused by excessive addition of hydrogen peroxide and iron catalyst could be solved.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2015.08a
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• pp.236.1-236.1
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• 2015

The surface morphology of front transparent conductive oxide (TCO) films is very important to achieve high current density in amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin film solar cells since it can scatter the light in a better way. In this study, we present the low cost hydrothermal deposited uniform zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-flower structure with various aspect ratios for a-Si thin film solar cells. The ZnO nano-flower structures with various aspect ratios were grown on the RF magnetron sputtered AZO films. The diameters and length of the ZnO nano-flowers was controlled by varying the annealing time. The length of ZnO nano-flowers were varied from 400 nm to $2{\mu}m$ while diameter was kept higher than 200 nm to obtain different aspect ratios. The ZnO nano-flowers with higher surface area as compared to conventional ZnO nano structure are preferred for the better light scattering. The conductivity and crystallinity of ZnO nano-flowers can be enhanced by annealing in hydrogen atmosphere at 350 oC. The vertical aligned ZnO nano-flowers showed higher haze ratio as compared to the commercially available FTO films. We also observed that the scattering in the longer wavelength region was favored for the high aspect ratio of ZnO nano-flowers. Therefore, we proposed low cost and vertically aligned ZnO nano-flowers for the high performance of thin film solar cells.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.553-561
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• 2012

Existing energy sources convert chemical energy into mechanical energy, while fuel cell directly generates electricity through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Therefore, it has a lot of strong points such as high efficiency, zero emission, and etc. In addition, with the development of hydrogen preservation technique, some companies have been researching and releasing portable fuel cell power packs for specific applications like military equipment, automobile, and so on. However, there are some drawbacks to the fuel cell, high cost and slow dynamic response. In order to compensate these weak points, auxiliary energy storages could be applied to the fuel cell system. In this paper, the optimum structure for a 150W portable fuel cell power pack with a battery pack is selected considering the specification of the system, and the design process of main parts is described in detail. Here, main objectives are compact size, simple control, high efficiency, and low cost. Then, an automatic mode change algorithm, which converts the operating mode depending on the states of fuel cell stack, battery pack, and load, is introduced. Finally, performance of the designed prototype using the automatic mode change control is verified through experiments.