• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.251-258
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• 2016

This article reports current status of micro fuel cell-combined heat and power (${\mu}FC$-CHP) systems which utilize both power and heat generated by fuel cells. There are several options for constructing CHP systems and among them, fuel cells are the most useful and their total energy efficiency combining heat and power can reach up to about 90%. Fuel cells are classified as five types based on the electrolyte, but the most suitable fuel cell types for the ${\mu}FC$-CHP system are proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). ${\mu}FC$-CHP systems have several advantages such as decrease of the transmission-distribution loss, reduced costs of electricity due to distributed power generation, and environmental-friendliness owing to zero emission. The main drawback of the ${\mu}FC$-CHP systems is the high initial investment, however, it keeps decreasing as the technology development reduces production costs. Currently, Japan is the most leading country of the ${\mu}FC$-CHP market, however, Korea tries to expand the market by planning the deployment of 1 million units of ${\mu}FC$-CHP systems and governmental subsidiary supporting of half of the install price. In this report, integration technologies for connecting FC and CHP, and technology trends of leading countries are presented as well.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.82-89
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• 2006

The redox behaviors of anode-supported flat tube for solid oxide fuel cell has been studied. The mass change of the extruded NiO/YSZ anode flat tube during redox cycling was examined by thermogravimetric analysis(TGA). The result of TGA was shown a rapidly mass change in the range of $455\;-\;670^{\circ}C$ and the reoxidation of the NiO/YSZ anode was almost completed at $750^{\circ}C$. The starting temperature of reoxidation and the maximum temperature of oxidation rate decreased with increasing the reoxidation cycle, which is attributed to the increased porosity caused by volume change. Bending strengths of the NiO/YSZ anode after redox cycling were 96 - 80 MPa and the bending strength decreased slightly with increasing the redox cycle. On the other hand, the bending strength of the NiO/YSZ anode with electrolyte showed 130 MPa after first redox cycling but decreased rapidly with increasing the redox cycle. From the results of the bending test and the microstructure observation, we conclude that the crack initiation of the electrolyte-coated NiO/YSZ anode was induced easily at interface of electrolyte/anode tube and propagated cross the electrolyte.

• Journal of Korean Society of Disaster and Security
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 2023

Fuel cells are low-carbon power sources that can expand distributed energy system and electric vehicle charging infrastructure when installing fuel cells in gas stations. In order to ensure safety for fuel cells in gas stations, quantitative risk assessments were conducted after deriving accident scenarios based on accident data of domestic and foreign gas stations and fuel cells. It calculates the expected extent of damage from fire and explosion that can occur in reality, not the worst accident scenario, and analyzes the damage impact. The separation distance of more than 9.0 m from a dispenser, 15.5 m from a car under refueling, 4.1 m from the ventilation pipe, 1.1 m from the gas adjustment device prevent the severe damage caused by the expected accident. This study result can be used to deploy fuel cells in gas stations and establish safety measures.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.51-59
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• 2013

High temperature fuel cell system, such as molten carbonate fuel cells(MCFC) and solid oxide fuel cells(SOFC), are capable of operating at MW rated power output. The power output change of high temperature fuel cell imposes the thermal and mechanical stresses on the fuel cell stack. To minimize the thermal-mechanical stresses on the stack, increases in the power output of high temperature fuel cell typically must be made at a slow rate. So, the short time interruption of high temperature fuel cell causes considerable generated energy losses. Because of the characteristic of high temperature fuel cell, we analyzed the impact of electrical fault in the fuel cell plant on other fuel cell generators in the same plant site. A various grounding configuration and voltage sag are analyzed. Finally, we presented the solution to minimize the effect of fault on other fuel cell generators.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.7 no.7
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• pp.867-872
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• 2006

Fuel cells are devices that convert chemical energy directly into electrical energy. Owing to the high efficiency of the fuel cells, a large number of research work have been done during these years. Among many kinds of the fuel cells, a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell is such kind of thing which works under low temperature. Because of the specialty, it stimulated intense global R&D competition. Most of the major world automakers are racing to develop polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell passenger vehicles. Unfortunately, there are still many problems to be solved in order to make them into the commercial use, such as the thermal and water management in working process of PEMFCs. To solve the difficulites facing the researcher, the analysis of the inner mechanism of PEMFC should be implemented as much as possible and mathematical modeling is an important tool for the research of the fuel cell especially with the combination of experiment. By regarding some of the assumptions and simplifications, using the finite element technique, a two-dimensional electrochemical mode is presented in this paper for the further comparison with experimental data. Based on the principals of the problem, the equations of electronic charge conservation equation, gas-phase continuity equation, and mass balance equation are used in calculating. Finally, modeling results indicate some of the phenomenon in a unit cell, and the relationships between potential and current density.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.7
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• pp.715-720
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• 2010

We propose an electroosmosis-based air delivery scheme for polymer electrolyte fuel cells and experimentally investigate its feasibility. An electroosmotic pump under a low-frequency AC electric field is used to displace initially a volume of pump working liquids. This working liquid is then pumped into a space enclosed by a flexible membrane and the movement of the membrane delivers air to a fuel cell. We successfully demonstrated the operation of a forced-convection fuel cell using this technique. In this preliminary study, however, the power consumption of the pump exceeds the power generated by the fuel cell. We conclude this paper with a discussion of several ways to reduce the pump-to-fuel cell power ratio.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.551-552
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• 2006

The miniature fuel cells have emerged as a promising power source for applications such as cellular phones, small digital devices, and autonomous sensors to embedded monitors or to micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) devices. Several chemicals run candidate at a fuel in those systems, such as hydrogen. methanol, ethanol, acetic acid, and di-methyl ether (DME). Among them, hydrogen shows most efficient fuel performance. However, there are some difficulties in practical application for portable power sources. Therefore, more recently, there have been many efforts for development of micro-reformer to operate highly efficient micro fuel cells with liquid fuels such as methanol, ethanol, and DME In our experiments, we have integrated a micro-fuel processor system using low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) materials. Our integrated micro-fuel processor system is containing embedded heaters, cavities, and 3D structures of micro- channels within LTCC layers for embedding catalysts (cf. Figs. 1 and 2). In the micro-channels of LTCC, we have loaded $CuO/ZnO/Al_2O_3$ catalysts using several different coating methods such as powder packing or spraying, dipping, and washing of catalyst slurry.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.103-108
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• 2004

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.483-488
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• 2016

Anode supported solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), consisting of Ni+YSZ anode, YSZ electrolyte, and LSM+YSZ cathode, were fabricated and constant current tested with direct internal reforming of methane (steam to carbon ratio ~ 2) as well as hydrogen fuel at $800^{\circ}C$. The cell, operated under direct internal reforming conditions, showed relatively rapid degradation (~ 1.6 % voltage drop) for 95 h; the cells with hydrogen fuel operated stably for 170 h. Power density and impedance spectra were also measured before and after the tests, and post-test analyses were conducted on the anode parts using SEM / EDS. The results indicate that the performance degradation of the cell operated with internal reforming can be attributed to carbon depositions on the anode, which increase the resistance against anode gas transport and deactivate the Ni catalyst. Thus, the present study shows that direct internal reforming SOFCs cannot be stably operated even under the condition of S/C ratio of ~ 2, probably due to non-uniform mixture (methane and steam) gas flow.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.29-32
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• 2003

Polymer electrolyte membranes are developed for the applications to facilitated transport membranes, fuel cells and solar cells. The polymer electrolyte membranes containing silver salt show the remarkably high separation performance for olefin/paraffin mixture in the solid state; the propylene permeance is 45 GPU and the ideal selectivity of propylene/propane is 15,000. For fuel cell membranes, the effects of the presence and size of the proton transport channels on the proton conductivity and methanol permeability were investigated. The cell performance for dye-sensitized solar cells employing polymer electrolytes are measured under light illumination. The overall energy conversion efficiency reaches 5.44 % at 10 ㎽/$\textrm{cm}^2$, to our knowledge the highest value ever reported in the polymer electrolytes.