• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.582-588
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• 2013

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) has been focused as a promising power source, which can replace a diesel engine regarding as major source of air pollution by the ship, due to high efficiency and eco-friendly. High operating temperature of SOFC is enable to secure of high efficiency, use various fuels and no need of high priced catalyst, but it may damage to components of SOFC. Therefore temperature control system has to be designed and validated before employing the fuel cell system for securing high efficiency and reliability. In this paper, instead of using typical method to validate performance of the controller, which consumes high cost and time, performance validation system using Hardware-in-the-loop simulation was developed and validated performence of the designed temperature controller for SOFC system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.5-9
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• 2013

Recently, eco-friendly sources of energy by fuel cells that use hydrogen as an energy source has emerged as the next generation of energy to solve the problem of environmental issues and exhaustion of energy. A solid oxide fuel cell(SOFC) classified based on the type of ion transfer mediator electrolyte has actively being researched. However, the reliability according to the thermal cycle is low during the operation of the fuel cell, and deformation problem comes from the difference in thermal expansion coefficient between the electrode material, the components made of ceramic material is also brittle, which means disadvantages in terms of the strength. Therefore, in this study, considering the states of the manufacturing and operating of SOFC single cells, the stress analyses in the each of the interfacial layer between the anode, electrolyte and the cathode were performed to get the basic data for reliability assessment of SOFC. The obtained results show that von Mises stress according to the thickness direction on operating state occurred maximum stress value in the electrolyte layer. And also the stresses inside the active area on a distance of 1 ${\mu}m$ from the electrode interface were estimated. Futhermore the evaluation was done for the variation of the stress according to the stage of the operation divided into three stages of manufacturing, stack, and operating.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.43-48
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• 2012

This paper presents the characterization of micro-tubular SOFCs using three different anode current collecting methods of inlet current collection (IC), both current collection (BC) and total current collection (TC). The maximum power densities of SOFCs at $750^{\circ}C$ using IC, BC and TC were 56 mW/$cm^2$ (0.43 V, 0.13 A/$cm^2$), 236 mW/$cm^2$ (0.43 V, 0.55 A/$cm^2$) and 261 mW/$cm^2$ (0.43 V, 0.61 A/$cm^2$) respectively. It was confirmed by impedance spectroscopy that both the polarization resistance and the ohmic resistance were dramatically increased at SOFC with IC.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.386-392
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• 2018

Fuel cells are known as eco - friendly energy facilities that can use heat energy and electric energy at the same time. Fuel cells are classified according to the temperature and material used, and solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is relatively high temperature ($700-800^{\circ}C$). SOFC requires a hot box consisting of a high temperature stack, a reformer, a burner, and the heat exchangers in order to use energy efficiently. The hot box needs to maintain heat insulation performance at high temperature to reduce heat loss. However, Fibrous insulation, which is widely used, needs to be improved because it has a disadvantage that the thermal conductivity is rapidly increased due to the increase of temperature. Therefore, this study was carried out to develop a thermal insulation, which is applied to multiple layers insulation (MLI) technic, that can be used under SOFC operating conditions and prevent a drastic drop in thermal conductivity at high temperature. The developed insulation is consist of a thermally conductive material, a spacer, and a reflective plate. The thermal conductivity of the insulation was measured by in the thermal conductivity measuring device at high temperature range. As a result, it was confirmed that the developed layers insulation have an good thermal conductivity (0.116 W/mK) than fibrous insulation (0.24 W/mK) as a radiation shielding effect at a high temperature of 1,173 K.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.132-139
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• 2020

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are among one of the promising technologies for efficient and clean energy. SOFCs offer several advantages over other types of fuel cells under relatively high temperatures (600℃ to 800℃). However, the thermal behavior of SOFC stacks at high operating temperatures is a serious issue in SOFC development because it can be associated with detrimental thermal stresses on the life span of the stacks. The thermal behavior of SOFC stacks can be influenced by operating or material properties. Therefore, this work aims to investigate the effects of the thermal conductivity of each component (anode, cathode, and electrolyte) on the thermal behavior of samarium-doped ceria-based SOFCs at intermediate temperatures. Computational fluid dynamics is used to simulate SOFC operation at 600℃. The temperature distributions and gradients of a single cell at 0.7 V under different thermal conductivity values are analyzed and discussed to determine their relationship. Simulations reveal that the influence of thermal conductivity is more remarkable for the anode and electrolyte than for the cathode. Increasing the thermal conductivity of the anode by 50% results in a 23% drop in the maximum thermal gradients. The results for the electrolyte are subtle, with a ~67% reduction in thermal conductivity that only results in an 8% reduction in the maximum temperature gradient. The effect of thermal conductivity on temperature gradient is important because it can be used to predict thermal stress generation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.399-407
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• 2011

This study analyzes the performance of hybrid power systems combining a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and a gas turbine (GT). Research focus is given to the influence of the size-dependent gas turbine performance on hybrid system performance. Three hybrid systems adopting different gas turbines (kW, sub-MW, multi-MW classes) are designed. As the gas turbine power increases (i.e. as the gas turbine performance enhances), the gas turbine power portion increases and the hybrid system efficiency increases. The hybrid system shows efficiency improvement over the SOFC only system even in the case where the gas turbine net power is nearly zero. The increase of gas turbine pressure ratio contributes to the net hybrid system power output in all of the three cases, while system efficiency is almost independent on the pressure ratio.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.45 no.12
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• pp.772-776
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• 2008

The Korea Electric Power Research Institute (KEPRI) has been developing planar solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and power systems for combined heat and power (CHP) units. The R&D work includes solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) materials investigation, design and fabrication of single cells and stacks, and kW class SOFC CHP system development. Anode supported cells composed of Ni-YSZ/FL/YSZ/LSCF were enlarged up to $15{\times}15\;cm^2$ and stacks were manufactured using $10{\times}10\;cm^2$ cells and metallic interconnects such as ferritic stainless steel. The first-generation system had a 37-cell stack and an autothermal reformer for use with city gas. The system showed maximum stack power of about $1.3\;kW_{e,DC}$ and was able to recover heat of $0.57{\sim}1.2\;kW_{th}$ depending on loaded current by making hot water. The second-generation system was composed of an improved 48-cell stack and a prereformer (or steam reformer). The thermal management subsystem design including heat exchangers and insulators was also improved. The second-generation system was successfully operated without any external heat source. Under self-sustainable operation conditions, the stack power was about $1.3\;kW_{e,DC}$ with hydrogen and $1.2\;kW_{e,DC}$ with city. The system also recuperated heat of about $1.1\;kW_{th}$ by making hot water. Recently KEPRI manufactured a 2kW class SOFC stack and a system by scaling up the second-generation 1kW system and will develop a 5kW class CHP system by 2010.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.822-828
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• 2013

Since the operating temperature of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is high, the heat management of the gases supplied to fuel cell system is important. In this paper, the temperature characteristic of the gases supplied to the anode and the cathode of the fuel cell is studied in case of utilizing the waste heat contained in the ship exhaust gas as a heat source to heat up the fuel, gas and water supplied to a 500kW SOFC system for a ship power. For the fuel cell system proposed in this paper, the temperature of gases supplied to the anode and the cathode was the highest temperature at 963K when the exhaust gas of the fuel cell was utilized as the heat source for gases supplied to fuel cell system instead of utilizing the ship exhaust gas. In addition, the engine power did not effect on the temperature of gases supplied to the fuel cell stack.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.196-200
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• 2010

Recently porous metal has been used as supporting metal in planar type SOFC. In order to search optimum alloys for porous metal support and estimate the stability of metal-supported SOFC at high temperature, it is necessary to investigate the oxidation behaviors of porous material for metal support in comparison with dense material. Oxidation tests of porous and dense stainless steels were conducted at $600^{\circ}C$ and $800^{\circ}C$. Since the specific surface area of porous material is much larger than that of dense material, surface area should be considered in order to compare the oxidation rate of porous stainless steel with that of dense stainless steel. The specific surface area of porous body was measured using image analyzer. The weight gain of porous stainless steel was much greater than those of dense stainless steels due to its larger specific surface area. considering the specific surface area, the oxidation rate of porous stainless steel is likely to be the same as that of dense stainless steel with the same surface area. The change in chromium content in stainless steel during oxidation was also investigated. The experimental result in chromium content in stainless steel during oxidation corresponded with the calculated value. While the change in chromium content in dense stainless steel during oxidation is negligible, chromium content in porous stainless steel rapidly decreases with oxidation time due to its large specific surface area. The significant decrease in chromium content in porous stainless steel during oxidation may affect the oxidation resistance of porous stainless steel support and long term stability of metal-supported SOFC.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.609-615
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• 2011

A 5 kW class SOFC system for cogeneration power units was consisted of a hot box part and cold BOPs. High temperature components such as a stack, a fuel reformer, a catalytic combustor, and heat exchanges are arranged in the bot box considering their operating temperatures for the system efficiency. The hot box was made of ceramic boards for the thermal insulation. A 5 kW class SOFC stack was composed of 2 sub-modules and each module had 64 cells with $15{\times}15cm^2$ area and stainless steel interconnects. The 5 kW class SOFC system was operated with a hydrogen and a city gas. With a hydrogen, the total power of the stacks was about 7.1 kWDC and electrical efficiency was about 49.3% at 80 A. With a city gas, the total power of the stacks was about 5.7 $kW_{DC}$ and electrical efficiency was about 38.8% at 60 A. Under self-sustained operating condition, the system efficiency including a power conditioning loss and a consumed power by BOPs was about 30.2%.