• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.484-492
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• 2012

The TMS(Thermal Management System) heater in a fuel cell vehicle has been developed to prevent a decline of fuel cell durability and cold start durability. Main functions of the COD(Cathode Oxygen Depletion) heater are depletion of oxygen in a cathode as heat energy and consumption of electric power for rapid warming up of a fuel cell stack. This paper covers subjects including the design specification of a heater, heater controller for detection of overheat and reliability assessment including coolant pressure cycle test of a heater. To verify the design concept, burst pressure and deformation analysis of plastic housing were carried out. Also, temperature distribution analysis of heater surface and coolant inside of housing were carried out to verify the design concept. By designing the plastic housing instead of a steel housing, the 30% weight lightening and 50% cost reduction were attained. A module-based design of a TMS system including a heater or reducing the watt density of a heater is a problem to be solved in the near future work.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2019

The objective of this study was to investigate performance characteristics of thermal management system(TMS) in a fuel cell electric vehicle with 100kW Fuel Cell(FC) system. In order to build up analytic modelling for TMS, each component was installed and tested under various operating conditions, such as water pump, radiator, 3-Way valve, COD heater, and FC stack etc. and as the results of them, correlations reflecting component's characteristics with flow rate, air velocity were developed. Developed analytic modelling was carried out under various operating conditions on the road. To verify modelling's accuracy, after prediction for optimum coolant flow rate was fulfilled under certain operating conditions, such as FC system, water pump speed, opening of 3-way valve, and pipe resistance, analytic and experimental values were compared and good agreement was shown. In order to predict cold-start operating performance for analytic modelling, coolant temperature variation was analyzed with $-20^{\circ}C$ ambient temperature and duration was predicted to rise in optimum temperature for FC. Because there is appropriate temperature difference between inlet and outlet of FC stack to operate FC system properly, related analysis was performed with respect to power consumption for TMS and heat rejection rate and performance map was depicted along with FC operating conditions.