• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.174-182
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• 2007

Fuel reforming technology for the fuel cell vehicles could be applied to internal combustion engine for the reduction of engine out emissions. Since syngas which is reformed from fossil fuel has hydrogen as a major component, it has abilities to enhance the combustion characteristics with wide flammability and high speed flame propagation. In this study, syngas was added to a gasoline engine to improve combustion stability and exhaust emissions of idle state. Syngas fraction is varied to 0%, 50%, 100% with various ignition timing and excess air ratio. Combustion stability, exhaust emissions, fuel consumption and exhaust gas temperature were measured to investigate the effects of syngas addition on idle performance. Results showed that syngas has ability to widely extend lean operation limit and ignition retard range with dramatical reduction of engine out emissions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.8 s.251
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• pp.731-740
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• 2006

The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is expected to be a candidate for distributed power sources in the next generation, due to its high efficiency and high-temperature waste heat utilization. In this study, the 5-cell SOFC stack was operated with pure hydrogen or reformed gas at anode side and air at cathode side. When stack was operated with diesel and methane ATR reformer, the influence of the $H_2O/C,\;O_2/C$ and GHSV on performance of stacks have been investigated. The result shows that the cell voltage was decreased with the increase of $H_2O/C$ and $O_2/C$ due to the partial pressure of fuel and water, and cell voltage was more sensitive to $O_2/C$ than $H_2O/C$. Next, the dynamic model of SOFC system included with ATR reformer was established and compared with experimental data. Based on dynamic model, the operation strategy to optimize SOFC-Reformer system was suggested and simulated.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.114-120
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• 2011

Fuel reforming technology for the fuel cell vehicles has been frequently applied to internal combustion engine for the reduction of engine out emissions. Since syngas which is reformed from fossil fuel has hydrogen as a major component, it has abilities to enhance the combustion characteristics with wide flammability and high speed flame propagation. In this paper, syngas was feed to a 2.0 liter SI engine with MPI to improve exhaust emissions under cold start and early state of idle condition. Syngas fraction is varied to 0%, 10%, 25%, with various ignition timings. Exhaust emission characteristics and the exhaust system temperature were measured to investigate the effects of syngas addition on cold start. Result showed that HC emission could be dramatically reduced due to the fact that syngas has $H_2$ and no HC as components. The amount of $NO_x$ emission was decreased with the increase of syngas fraction. Because the dilution effect of $N_2$ and the retard of ignition timing reduces the peak combustion temperature inside the cylinder. Exhaust gas temperature was lower than that of gasoline feeding condition. Retarded ignition timing, however, resulted in increased exhaust gas temperature approximated to gasoline condition. It is supposed that the usage of syngas in an SI engine is an effective solution to meet the future strict emission regulations.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.323-327
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• 2009

To extract hydrogen for stack, fuels such as LPG and LNG were reformed in the fuel processor, which is comprised of desulfurizer, reformer, shift converter, CO remover and steam generator. All elements of fuel processor are integrated in a single package. Highly active catalysts (desulfurizing adsorbent, reforming catalyst, CO shift catalyst, CO removal catalyst) and the various burners were developed and evaluated in this study. The performance of the developed catalysts and the commercial ones was similar. 1 kW, 5 kW class fuel processor systems using the developed catalyst and burner showed efficiency of 75 %(LHV, for LNG). The start-up time of the 1 kW class fuel processor was less than 50 minutes and its volume including insulation was about 30 l. The start-up time of 3 kW and 5 kW class fuel processors with the volume of 90 l and 150 l, respectively, was about 60 minutes. In the case of LPG fuel, efficiency, volume and start-up time of 1kW class fuel processor showed 73 %(LHV), < 60 l and < 60 min, respectively. Advanced fuel processor showed more highly efficiency and shorter start-up time due to the improvement of heat exchanger and operating method. 1 kW and 3 kW class fuel processors have been evaluated for reliability and durability including with on/off test of developed catalysts and burner.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.467-470
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• 2006

For a mobile application such as cellular phone, micro fuel cells should be extremely compact and thin. RHFC can be an alternative solution because RHFC gives higher power density than DMFC and does not need ahydrogen storage vessel In this paper, RHFC using methanol fuel is made as a novel planar design without a PROX. Both reformer and cell are made closely in a same plate to share the heater of reformer with the cell. The PBI membrane is used in the cell. The reason is that high temperature of reformer can cause a performance drop when perfluorosulfonic acid membrane such as Nafion is used such a high temperature operation also guarantees the higher CO tolerance to MEA catalyst. The cell is designed as an air-breathing type which the cathode of the cell is opened to the air. The commercial Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 steam reformer catalyst is packed in reformer channel. The active area of MEA is $11.9cm^2$ and the peak power density was $27.5mW/cm^2$.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.656-662
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• 2007

Fuel reformer using plasma and shift reactor for CO oxidation were designed and manufactured as $H_2$ supply device to operate a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). $H_2$ selectivity was increased by non-thermal plasma reformer using GlidArc discharge with Ni catalyst simultaneously. Shift reactor was consisted of steam generator, low temperature shifter, high temperature shifter and preferential oxidation reactor. Parametric screening studies of fuel reformer were conducted, in which there were the variations of the catalyst temperature, gas component ratio, total gas ratio and input power. and parametric screening studies of shift reactor were conducted, in which there were the variations of the air flow rate, stema flow rate and temperature. When the $O_2/C$ ratio was 0.64, total gas flow rate was 14.2 l/min, catalytic reactor temperature was $672^{\circ}C$ and input power 1.1 kJ/L, the production of $H_2$ was maximized 41.1%. And $CH_4$ conversion rate, $H_2$ yield and reformer energy density were 88.7%, 54% and 35.2% respectively. When the $O_2/C$ ratio was 0.3 in the PrOx reactor, steam flow ratio was 2.8 in the HTS, and temperature were 475, 314, 260, $235^{\circ}C$ in the HTS, LTS, PrOx, the conversion of CO was optimized conditions of shift reactor using simulated reformate gas. Preheat time of the reactor using plasma was 30 min, component of reformed gas from shift reactor were $H_2$ 38%, CO<10 ppm, $N_2$ 36%, $CO_2$ 21% and $CH_4$ 4%.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.110-115
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• 2007

Solid oxide fuel cell(SOFC) has high fuel flexibility due to its high operating temperatures. Hydrocarbonaceous fuels such as diesel has several advantages such as high energy density and established infrastructure for fuel cell applications. However diesel reforming has technical problems like coke formation in a reactor, which results in catastrophic failure of whole system. Performance degradation of diesel autothermal reforming (ATR) leads to increase of undesirable hydrocarbons at reformed gases and subsequently degrades SOFC performance. In this study, we investigate the degradation of SOFC performance(OCV, open circuit voltage) under hydrocarbon(n-Butane) feeds and characteristics of diesel performing under various ratios of reactants($H_2O/C,\;O_2/C$ molar ratios) for improvement of SOFC performance. Especially we achieved relatively high performance of diesel ATR under $H_2O/C=0.8,\;O_2/C=3$ condition.