• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.172-175
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• 2001

Nanophase catalyst layer for direct methanol fuel cell has been fabricated by magnetron sputtering method. Catalyst metal targets and carbon were sputtered simultaneously on the Nafion membrane surface at abnormally higher gas (Ar/He mixture) pressure than that of normal thin film processing. They could be coated as a novel structure of catalyst layer containing porous PtRu or Pt and carbon particles both in nanometer range. Membrane electrode assembly made with this layer led to a reduction of the catalyst loading. At the catalyst loading of 1.5mg $PtRu/cm^2$ for anode and 1mg $Pt/cm^2$ for cathode, it could provide $45 mW/cm^2$ in the operation at 2 M methanol, 1 Bar Air at 80"C. It is more than $30\%$ increase of the power density performance at the same level of catalyst loading by conventional method. This was realized due to the ultra fine particle sizes and a large fraction of the atoms lie on the grain boundaries of nanophase catalyst layer and they played an important role of fast catalyst reaction kinetics and more efficient fuel path. Commercialization of direct methanol fuel cell for portable electronic devices is anticipated by the further development of such design.

• 한국전기화학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.06a
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• pp.71-74
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• 2004

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.42-50
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• 2011

The Montmorillonite (MMT) in the polymer matrix is expected to reduce methanol permeability due to the tortous path formed by dispersed silicate layers. However, the polymer composite membranes containing non-proton conducting inorganic particle tend to show low proton conductivity. To solve this problem, we used an ion exchange method to prepare functionalized MMT with various silane coupling agents. The modified MMT was randomly dispersed in sulfonated poly (arylene ether sulfone) (SPAES) matrix to prepare SPAES/modified MMT composite membranes. The performances of hybrid membranes for DMFCs application were investigated. The SPAES/modified composite membrane showed increased proton conductivity compared with the non-modified MMT composite membrane. However, the methanol permeability of the SPAES/modified membrane was higher than that of the non-modified MMT.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.701-710
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to investigate experimentally the effect of low purity methanol (LPM) on performance and smoke emission characteristics by using a four-cycle, four-cylinder, water-cooled, direct injection diesel engine with EGR system. The experiments are performed by the change of engine load in the engine load ranges of 25 to 100% with an interval of 25% under the constant engine speed of 2000 rpm. The LPM in the fuel blends contained 24.88% water by volume. The blended fuel ratios of diesel oil to LPM are maintained at 100/0, 95/5, 90/10 and 85/15% on the volume basis. In this paper, EGR rates are varied in three conditions of 0, 12.8 and 16.5%. The result shows that the brake power of a blended fuel with 15% LPM is reduced more 11.1% than that of the neat diesel oil at the full load with the EGR rate of 16.5%. At this condition, also, the brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) is increased by 3.2%, the exhaust gas temperature is decreased by 10.7%, the smoke opacity is decreased by 18.7% and the brake thermal efficiency is increased by 7.3%. The sharp reduction of smoke opacity for a blended fuel with the LPM content of 15% at the full load without EGR system is observed by 68.4% compared with that of the neat diesel oil due to the high oxygen content of LPM.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.23-27
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• 2003

In this study investigations have been carried out for the evaluation of small DMFCS under passive operation conditions for use in portable powers. Under passive conditions, a maximum performance was obtained at a methanol concentration of 4 M and at a catalyst loading of $8mg/cm^2$ on both electrodes. By optimizing various parameters, we could achieve the highest performance of $55mW/cm^2$ at 1 attn and at R.T.A monopolar stack consisting of 6 unit cells with active area of $4.5cm^2/cell$ was prepared and it showed a uniform voltage distribution all over the cells and it had a power output of 1 watt and a power density of $37mW/cm^2$ A monopolar stack which consisted of 16 cells and produced a 2.4W power was also fabricated and was tested for operation of a miniature car.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1999.07d
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• pp.1870-1872
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• 1999

Performance of 20-cell stack for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) was tested at constant temperature. Electrode evaluation used to the stack was tested by the performance of a single cell. A new composite electrode prepared from active carbon cloth and high porous active carbon was developed for hydrophilic layer of the cell. Characteristics of a single cell using the composite electrode showed the current density of $500mA/cm^2$ at the cell voltage of 0.4V at $120^{\circ}C$. For the operating of 20 days. the cell voltage at constant cell current densty of $100mA/cm^2$ was slightly reduced from 0.62V to 0.53V with the cell voltage decay rate of 14.5%. Power of 20-cell stack at 5.3V, $100^{\circ}C$ was about 180W.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.27 no.11
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• pp.1563-1571
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• 2003

This paper is the second part of several companion papers which compare the method of Air-fuel ratio(AFR) determination. In the previous paper, Eltinge chart was applied to the arbitrary fuel composition and the charts for gasoline, diesel, methanol, M85, liquefied petroleum gas(LPG), natural gas(NG), propane and butane were illustrated. In Eltinge chart, however, unburned hydrocarbon (UHC) is not used for determination of AFR. For improving accuracy, Eltinge suggested UHC compensation after the AFR reading in the chart. This compensation reduced the difference between real and reading value. In the compensation, however, the correction of oxygen and carbon dioxide is uncertain and there might be a mistake in conversion of UHC reading value. Therefore, the error is overestimated comparing with Spindt one which is most widely used. In addition, there is no comparison of the value with other useful methods. In this paper, the compensation of unburned HC was performed in Eltinge chart and the compensated value was compared with Spindts formula over wide range of AFR. The objects of investigating fuel are gasoline, methanol, NG and LPG. The result shows that Eltinge and Spindt method is flawlessly compatible and the difference between the two methods is under 0.3% in a λrange from 0.9 to 1.7. The method fur debugging instrumentation error is also presented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.858-861
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• 2006

In this paper, a study on the noise reduction in a mobile fuel cell system is presented. Among various fuel cell systems around 20W capacities designed for mobile electronic devices, the active direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) systems have been recently developed. In such systems, the primary noise source is the air pump which provides sufficient air flow ($5{\sim}6$ liter/min) for electrochemical reaction with methanol fuel while the noise contributions from other auxiliary parts are relatively small. Especially, the discrete noise tones generated by the air pump are dominant and those frequency peaks related to the rotor harmonics are needed to be suppressed by a silencer. Therefore. the Herschel/Quinke (HQ) tubes, which use the out-of-phase cancellation of acoustic waves propagating through direct and indirect pathways, are applied to the inlet of the air pump. Performance of noise reduction with HQ silencer is analytically estimated by calculating the transmission. The length and number of thin HQ tubes are optimized to decrease the radiated noise. As a result, the sound pressure level could be successfully reduced by about 10 dB after applying three serially connected HQ tubes.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.88-91
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• 2014

In this study, oil as a source of biodiesel from Nannochloropsis oceanica was extracted using organic solvent. The oil extraction yield and efficiency from dry and wet microalgae were investigated. The initial fatty acids content of the N. oceanica was 317.8 mg/g cell showing a high oil content over 30%. The yield from dry microalgae was higher than that from wet microalgae due to the inhibition of water. The yield by chloroform-methanol was the highest and the yield by hexane was the lowest. However, the total fatty acids contents with the chloroform-methanol were 678.7 and 778.2 mg/g oil under dry and wet conditions, respectively. The high oil extraction yield by chloroform-methanol reflected the fact that the extracted oil contained a high level of impurity. The hexane-methanol extraction from dry N. oceanica showed high oil extraction efficiency, 82.6%. The chloroform-methanol extraction under wet condition also showed high efficiency, 88.0%. While the hexane-methanol extraction from dry microalgae is desirable under low drying cost, the chloroform-methanol extraction from wet microalgae is desirable under high drying cost.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.82-88
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• 2020

Recently, a fuel reforming plant for supplying high purity hydrogen has been studied to increase the operation time of underwater weapon systems. Since steam reforming is an endothermic reaction, it is necessary to continuously supply heat to the reactor. A fuel reforming plant needs a methanol-O₂ catalytic burner to obtain heat and supply heat to the reformer. In this study, two types of designs of a catalytic burner are presented and the results are analyzed through the experiments. The design of the catalytic burner is divided into that the O₂ supply direction is perpendicular to the methanol flow direction (Design 1) and the same as the methanol flow direction (Design 2). In case of Design 1, backfire and flame combustion occurred in the mixing space in front of the catalyst, and in the absence of the mixing space, combustion reaction occurred only in a part of the catalyst. For above reasons, Design 1 could not increase the exhaust gas temperature to 750℃. In Design 2, no flashback and flame combustion were observed, the exhaust gas could be maintained up to 750℃. However, the O₂ distributor was exposed to high temperatures, resulting in thermal damage.