• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 대한기계학회 2008년도 추계학술대회B
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• pp.2828-2833
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• 2008

Water management is one of many operating parameters, which influences the performance and stability of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Local humidity condition including liquid water saturation has profound impacts on the distributions of overpotentials, current density, and membrane water content. Computational fluid dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the effect of the inlet humidity variation on the performance of a PEMFC of $9\;cm^2$ active cell area with serpentine flow fields. The results showed that the performance of the simulated PEMFC remained at an almost same level when the cathode inlet humidity was changed from 100% to 60%, while reaching its maximum at air humidity of 80%. However, further decrease in the cathode inlet humidity below 40% started to significantly deteriorate the performance of the PEMFC. The variations of overpotentials, membrane water content, etc. due to the change in the cathode inlet humidity were also discussed.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• 제27권2호
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• pp.144-154
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• 2016

HT-PEMFC (high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell) using PA (phosphoric acid) doped PBI (polybenzimidazole) membrane has been researched for extending the lifetime. However, the existing work on durability of HT-PEMFC focuses on identifying degradation causes of lab scale. The short life time of HT-PEMFC is still the problem for its commercialization. In this paper, an operating method to maximize life time of 5kW HT-PEMFC stack are proposed. The proposed method includes major steps such as minimization of OCV (Open Circuit Voltage) exposure, control of the proper stack temperature, and N2 purging for the stack. This long life operating method was based on the fragmentary results of degradation from previous research works. Experimentally, the 5 kW homemade HT-PEMFC stack was operated for a long time based on the proposed method and the stack successfully can operate within the desired degradation rate for the target life time.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• 제22권7호
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• pp.76-83
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• 2014

During PEMFC(Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell) operation monitoring and diagnosis are important issues for reliability and durability. Stack defect can be followed by a critical cell voltage drop in the stack. One method for monitoring the cell voltage is CVM(Cell Voltage Monitoring), where all cells in the stack are electrically connected to a voltage measuring system and monitored these voltages. The other methods are based on the EIS(Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy) and on nonlinear frequency response. In this paper, intermodulation(IM) method for diagnosis PEMFC stack is introduced. To detect one or more critical PEMFC cell voltage PEMFC stack is excited by two or more test sinusoid current, and the frequency response of the stack voltage is analyzed. If one or more critical cell voltage exists, higher harmonics on the voltage frequency spectrum will appear. For the proposed IM method, stack simulation and experiments are conducted.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• 제13권1호
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• pp.63-70
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• 2022

Compared with hydrogen, ammonia has the advantages of high gravimetric hydrogen densities (17.8 wt.%), ease of storage and transportation as a chemical hydrogen storage medium, while its application in small-scale on-site hydrogen production scenarios is limited by the need for complex separation equipment during high purity hydrogen production. Therefore, the study of PEMFC, which can directly utilize ammonia decomposition gas, can greatly expand the application of fuel cells. In this paper, the output characteristics, fuel efficiency and the variation trend of hydrogen concentration and local current density in the anode channel of fuel cell with the output voltage of PEMFC fueled by ammonia decomposition gas were studied by experiment and simulation. The results indicate that the maximum output power of the hybrid fuel decreases by 9.6% compared with that of the pure hydrogen fuel at the same inlet hydrogen equivalent. When the molar concentration of hydrogen in the anode channel is less than 0.12, the output characteristics of PEMFC will be seriously affected. Employing ammonia decomposition gas as fuel, the efficiency corresponding to the maximum output power of PEMFC is approximately 47%, which is 10% lower than the maximum efficiency of pure hydrogen.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 한국항해항만학회 2022년도 추계학술대회
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• pp.162-163
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• 2022

Maritime transportation is going to transfer to alternative fuels as a result of the worldwide demands toward decarbonization and tougher maritime emissions regulations. Methanol is considered as a potential marine fuel, which has the ability to reduce SOx and CO₂ emissions, reduce climate change effects, and achieve the objective of green shipping. This work proposes and combines the innovative combination system of direct methanol solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), gas turbines (GT), and organic Rankine cycles (ORC) for maritime vessels. The system's primary power source is the SOFC, while the GT and PEMFC use the waste heat from the SOFC to generate useful power and improve the system's ability to use waste heat. Each component's thermodynamics model and the combined system's model are established and examined. The multigeneration system's energy and exergy efficiency are 76.2% and 30.3%, respectively. When compared to a SOFC stand-alone system, the energy efficiency of the GT and PEMFC system is increased by 19.2%. The use of PEMFC linked SOFC has significant efficiency when a ship is being started or maneuvered and a quick response from the power and propulsion plant is required.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제51권1호
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• pp.68-72
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• 2013

Until a recent day, degradation of PEMFC MEA (membrane and electrode assembly) has been studied, separated with membrane degradation and electrode degradation, respectively. But membrane and electrode were degraded coincidentally at real PEMFC operation condition. During simultaneous degradation, there was interaction between membrane degradation and electrode degradation. The effect of electrode degradation on membrane degradation was studied in this work. We compared membrane degradation after electrode degradation and membrane degradation without electrode degradation. I-V performance, hydrogen crossover current, fluoride emission rate (FER), impedance and TEM were measured after and before degradation of MEA. Electrode degradation reduced active area of Pt catalyst, and then radical/$H_2O_2$ evolution rate decreased on Pt. Decrease of radical/$H_2O_2$ reduced the velocity of membrane degradation.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• 제28권1호
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• pp.118-124
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• 2017

An air cooling, open cathode type polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has the advantages of system simplification and cost effectiveness. Open cathode PEMFC could suffer from reduced performance due to the membrane dehydration in low humidity of air. Effects of the cathode air flow rate, anode purge interval and long term storage on PEMFC performance were investigated in this work. Fan voltage is an important factor on air cooling PEMFC performance because the cathode air flow rate and stack temperature were controlled by fan voltage. The dead ended anode (DEA) method was applied to increase hydrogen usage. Periodical purge was used to discharge accumulated water and gas. The influence of long term non-operating condition on PEMFC performance degradation due to the membrane dehydration was also studied and the quick recovery method was developed.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제58권1호
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• pp.59-63
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• 2020

Radical scavenger is used to improve the durability of PEMFC polymer membrane. In this study, we investigated whether fucoidan extracted from seaweed as a radical scavenger prevents electrochemical degradation through Fenton and OCV Holding experiments. Fucoidan has an antioxidant effect, protecting the polymer membrane from hydrogen peroxide and oxygen radicals, reducing the degradation rate to 1/10. Fucoidan has been shown to be more effective than MnO₂, which is used as a radical scavenger. In the PEMFC cell, the accelerated durability evaluation method (OCV Holding) showed that fucoidan reduced the hydrogen permeability of the polymer membrane by 12% and enhanced the performance by 29.1% compared to without radical scavenger. And fucoidan was found to be more effective in the cathode side ionomer than the anode side.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제53권4호
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• pp.412-416
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• 2015

To evaluate the performance and durability of membrane, measurement of hydrogen crossover is needed during PEMFC(Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells) operation. In this work, concentration of hydrogen at cathode was analysed by gas chromatograph during operation suppling with air instead of inert gas into the cathode. The hydrogen permeated through membrane reacted with oxygen at cathode and then the concentration of hydrogen was lower than in case inert gas was supplied. Hydrogen concentration decreased as the flow rate of air increased at cathode. Increase of temperature, humidity and pressure of anode gas enhanced the hydrogen concentration at cathode. The hydrogen concentration was about 5.0 ppm at current density of $120mA/cm^2$ during general PEMFC operation.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• 제50권3호
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• pp.556-561
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• 2012

In this study, the effect of properties of gas diffusion layer (GDL) on the performance of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) was investigated using the numerical simulation. The multi-phase mixture ($M^2$) model was used to calculate liquid water saturation and oxygen concentration in GDL. GDL properties, which were contact angle, porosity, gas permeability and thickness, were changed to investigate the effect of GDL properties on the performance of PEMFC. The results demonstrated that performance of PEMFC was increased with increasing contact angle and porosity of GDL, but decreased with increasing thickness of GDL. The liquid water saturation was decreased but oxygen concentration was increased at the GDL-catalyst layer interface, because the mass transfer resistance decreased as the porosity and contact angle increased. On the other hands, as the thickness of GDL increased, pathway for liquid water and oxygen gas became longer, and then mass transfer resistance increased. For this reason, performance of PEMFC decreased with increasing thickness of GDL.