• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.1577-1582
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• 2010

A 20 wt % Pt/C is fabricated and characterized for use as the cathode catalyst in a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). By using the polyol method, the fabrication process is optimized by modifying the carbon addition sequence and precursor mixing conditions. The crystallographic structure, particle size, dispersion, and activity toward oxygen reduction of the as-prepared catalysts are compared with those of commercial Pt/C catalysts. The most effective catalyst is obtained by ultrasonic treatment of ethylene glycol-carbon mixture and immediate mixing of this mixture with a Pt precursor at the beginning of the synthesis. The catalyst exhibits very uniform particle size distribution without agglomeration. The mass activities of the as-prepared catalyst are 13.4 mA/$mg_{Pt}$ and 51.0 mA/$mg_{Pt}$ at 0.9 V and 0.85 V, respectively, which are about 1.7 times higher than those of commercial catalysts.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.183-186
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• 2003

In a PEM fuel cell electrode, backing layer has tremendous impact on electrode performance. The backing layer provides structural support for the porous electrode, distributes the reactants to the other layers and acts as a current collector. It has major influence on the water management in a PEM fuel cell. Selection of suitable backing layer material for the fabrication of electrode is thus very important to achieve high performance. In this paper we have compared the performance of PEM fuel cell electrodes fabricated using carbon paper EC-TPI-060T, carbon cloth EC-CCI-060T, (ElectroChem Inc.USA) and Carbon cloth from Textron, USA (CPW 003 grade). Mass transport problem was observed under non-pressurized condition, at high current densities, in the caie of EC-CC1-060T carbon cloth electrode (at $50^{\circ}C$), due to its higher thickness. The performance of carbon paper electrode was higher than EC-CCI-060T carbon cloth electrode. The performance of Textron carbon cloth was comparable to EC-TPI -060T carbon paper.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.390-395
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• 2013

Nanocrystalline CrN films were deposited on Si (100) substrates by means of asymmetric pulsed DC reactive magnetron sputtering. We investigated the growth behavior, corrosion resistance and mechanical properties of CrN films with a change in the duty cycle and pulse frequency. The grain size of the CrN films decreased from 25.4 nm to 11.2 nm upon a decrease in the duty cycle. The corrosion potentials for the CrN films by DC sputtering was approximately - 0.6 V, and it increased to - 0.3 V in the CrN films which underwent pulsed sputtering. The nanoindentation hardness of the CrN films also increased with a decrease in the duty cycle. This enhancement of the corrosion resistance and mechanical properties of pulsed sputtered CrN films could be attributed to the densification and surface smoothness of the microstructure of the films.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.293-299
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• 2012

The serpentine flow channel is widely used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) to prevent flooding phenomena because it effectively removes liquid water in the flow channel. The pressure drop between inlet and outlet increases as compared with straight channels due to minor losses associated with the corners of the turning configurations. This results in a strong pressure gradient between adjacent channels in specific regions, where some amount of reactant gas can be delivered to catalyst layers by convection through a gas diffusion layer (GDL). The enhancement of the convective flow in the GDL, so-called bypass flow, affects fuel cell performance since the bypass flow influences the reactant transport and thus its concentration over the active area. In the present paper, for the bipolar plate design, a simple analytic model has been proposed to predict the bypass flow in the serpentine type flow channels and validated with three-dimensional numerical simulation results.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.114-121
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• 2003

Hydrogen generation system using aqueous $NaBH_4$ solution was developed for feeding small polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Ru was selected as a catalyst with its high activity for the hydrogen generation reaction. Hydrogen generation rate was measured with changing the solution temperature, amount of catalyst loading, $NaBH_4$ concentration, and NaOH (a base-stabilizer) concentration. A passive air-breathing 2 W PEMFC stack was operated on hydrogen generated using $20wt%\;NaBH_4+5wt%$ NaOH solution and Ru catalyst.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.135-143
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• 2016

Biogas is a renewable fuel from anaerobic digestion of organic matters such as sewage sludge, manure and food waste. Raw biogas consists mainly of methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and water. Biogas may also contain other impurities such as siloxanes, halogenated hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons. Efficient power technologies such as fuel cell demand ultra-low concentration of containments in the biogas feed, imposing stringent requirements on fuel purification technology. Biogas is upgraded from pressure swing adsorption after biogas purification process which consists of water, $H_2S$ and siloxane removal. A polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell power plant is designed to operate on reformate produced from upgraded biogas by steam reformer.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.36-41
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• 2016

The development need of new renewable energy is more and more important to resolve exhaustion of chemical fuels and environmental pollution. Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell has been widely studied to the extent that it can be used commercially. But there are many problems to be solved. One of them is to enhance the stability of fuel cell stacks. This paper proposes a new fault diagnosis method using Least Square Method (LSM) which is one of parameter estimation methods. The proposed method extracts equivalent circuit parameters from on-line measurements. Parameters of the circuit are estimated according to normal and abnormal states using simulation. The variation of parameters estimated in each states enables the estimation of state in fuel cells. Thus the LSM presented can be a suitable on-line parameter estimation method in PEMFC.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.29-35
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• 2016

It is important to uniformly supply the fuel gas into the reaction activity area in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Recent studies have shown that the cell performance can be significantly improved by employing metal foam gas distributor as compared with the conventional bipolar plate types. The metal foam gas distributor has been reported to be more efficient to fuel transport. In this study, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been performed to examine the effects of metal foam flow field design on the fuel supply to the reaction site. Darcy's law is used for the flow in the porous media. By solving additional advection equation for fluid particle trajectory, the gas transport has been visualized and examined for various geometrical configuration of metal foam gas distributor.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.503-509
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• 2016

Fuel cell is a device for producing electricity by using the hydrogen produced by the fuel processor. At this time, CO is also created by the fuel processor. The resulting CO enters the stack where is produce electricity and leads to the adsorption of anode catalyst, finally the CO poisoning occurs. Stack which occurred CO poisoning has a reduction in performance and shelf life are gradually fall because they do not respond to hydrogen. In this paper, experiments that using a PROX reactor to prevent CO poisoning were carried out for removing the CO concentration to less than 10ppm range available in the fuel cell. Furthermore experiments by the PROX reaction was designed and manufactured with a water-cooling heat exchange reactor to maintain a suitable temperature control due to the strong exothermic reaction.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.601-607
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• 2019

Ammonia would be formed in natural gas containing small amount of nitrogen reforming process in the process natural gas, which might damage the Pt catalyst and Prox catalyst. In the article, the effect of nitrogen contents on the formation of ammonia in the reforming process has been studied. In the experiments, Ru based and Ni based catalysts were used and the concentration of ammonia in the reformate gas at various gas hourly space velocity was measured. Experimental result shows that relatively higher ammonia concentration was measured with Ru based catalyst than with Ni based catalyst. It also shows that the concentration of ammonia increased rapidly after most of the methane converted into hydrogen. Based on the experimental results to reduce ammonia concentration it might be better to finish methane conversion at the exit position of the reforming reactor to minimize the contact time of catalyst and nitrogen with high concentration of hydrogen.