• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.34-40
• /
• 2015

A stack in the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) consists of bipolar plates, a membrane electrode assembly, a gas diffusion layer, a collector and end plates. High current density is usually obtainable partially from uniform temperature distribution in the fuel cell. A size optimization method considering the thermal expansion effect of stacked plates was developed on the basis of finite element analyses. The thermal stresses in end, bipolar, and cooling plates were calculated based on temperature distribution obtained from thermal analyses. Finally, the optimization method was applied and optimum thicknesses of the three plates were calculated considering both fastening bolt tension and thermal expansion of each unit cell (72 cells, 5kW). The optimum design considering both thermal and mechanical loads increases the thickness of an end plate by 0.64-0.83% the case considering only mechanical load. The effect can be enlarged if the number of stack increases as in an automotive application to 200-300 stacks.

• Membrane Journal
• /
• v.33 no.6
• /
• pp.279-304
• /
• 2023

Polybenzimidazole (PBI) based membranes have evolved in literature as a popular membrane material for various applications in the past two decades because of their high temperature thermal durability, strong mechanical and tensile properties, high glass transition temperature (T_g), ion conduction ability at elevated temperature (up to 200℃), oxidative or chemical durability along with robust network like structural rigidity, which make PBI membranes suitable for various potential applications in chemically challenging environments. Ion conducting PBI based membranes have been extensively utilized in high temperature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFC). In addition, PBI based membranes have been vastly utilized for the development of gas separation membranes and organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) membranes for their unique characteristics. This review will cover the recent progress and application of various types of flat sheet PBI based membranes for HT-PEMFC, gas separation and OSN application.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.146-152
• /
• 2016

A combined system with PEMFC and reformer is introduced and optimized for the real use of this kind of system in the future. The hydrogen source to operate the PEMFC system is methanol, which needs two parts of methanol reforming reaction and preferential oxidation (PROX) for the hydrogen fuel process in the combined operation PEMFC system. With the optimized methanol steam reforming condition, we tested PROX reactions in various operation temperature from 170 to 270 ℃ to investigate CO concentration data in the reformed gases. Using these different CO concentration, PEMFC performances are achieved at the combined system. Pt/C and Ru promoted Pt/C were catalysts were used for the anode to compare the stability in CO contained gases. The alloy catalyst of PtRu/C shows higher performance and better resistance to CO than the Pt/C at even high CO amount of 200 ppm, indicating a promotion not only to the activity but also to the CO tolerance. Furthermore, in a system point of view, there is a fluctuation in the PEMFC operation due to the unstable fuel supply. Therefore, we also modified the methanol reforming by a scaled up reactor and pressurization to produce steady operation of PEMFC. The optimized system with the methanol reformer and PEMFC shows a stable performance for a long time, which is providing a valuable data for the PEMFC commercialization.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.819-826
• /
• 2011

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is regarded as the most promising alternative power sources for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) due to its high energy density and silent operation. Since there are many load changes during UAV flight, thermal management is one of the important factor for the performance of PEMFC. In order to reduce the UAV weight for the stable operation of UAV, thermal management system (TMS) studied in this work does not use the fan but use the air flowing into UAV by UAV flight. In order to develop the passive type heat exchanger (HEX) for 1kW PEMFC, four types of HEXs are fabricated and their cooling performances are compared. The parametric study on the cooling performance of HEXs has performed with the variation of operating parameters such as mass flow rates and inlet temperature of air and coolant. Type 4 has the best performance in every case. This study can be helpful to achieve the optimal design of HEX for PEMFC powered UAV.

• Rapid Communication in Photoscience
• /
• v.1 no.2
• /
• pp.43-43
• /
• 2012

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2004.11a
• /
• pp.510-515
• /
• 2004

A proton exchange membrane fuel cells(PEMFC) operate at low temperature, allowing for faster startups and immediate response to change in the demand for power, and also deliver high power density. To maximize economical efficiency in PEMPC, it is necessary to the optimization. Response surface method(RSM) has non-gradient and fast convergency characteristics. Sampling points are extracted by design of experiments using Central Composite Method. In this paper, it is shown that the optimization is required for the design study of the PEMFC.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2009.04b
• /
• pp.212-214
• /
• 2009

The polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC) with the advantages of low-operating temperature, high current density, low cost and volume, fast start-up ability, and suitability for discontinuous operation becomes the most reasonable and attractive power system for transportation vehicle and micro-grid power plant in a household. 200W PEMFC(Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell) system applied to middle and small-scaled micro-grid power system was constructed by this study, then the electrical characteristics and diagnosis of the fuel cell were analyzed with thermal variation.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2009.06a
• /
• pp.373-373
• /
• 2009

Relative humidity, membrane conductivity and water activity are critical parameters of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) for high performance and reliability. These parameters are closely related with temperature. Moreover, the ideal values of these parameters are not always identical along the channels. Therefore, the cooling channel design and its operating condition should be well optimized along the all location of the channels. In the present study, we have performed a numerical investigation on the effects of cooling channels on performance of a PEMFC. Three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are solved with the energy equation including heat generated by the electrochemical reactions in the fuel cell. The present numerical model includes the gas diffusion layers (GDL) and serpentine channels for both anode and cathode gas flows, as well as cooling channels. To accurately predict the water transport across the membrane, the distribution of water content in the membrane is calculated by solving a nonlinear differential equation with a nonlinear coefficient, i.e., the water diffusivity which is a function of water content as well as temperature. Main emphasis is placed on the heat transfer between the solid bipolar plate and coolant flow. The present results show that local current density is affected by cooling channels due to the change of the oxygen concentration and the membrane conductivity as well as the water content. It is also found that the relative humidity is influenced by the generated water and the gas temperature and thus it affects the distribution of fuel concentration and the conductivity of the membrane, ultimately fuel cell performance. Unit-cell experiments are also carried out to validate the numerical models. The performance curves between the models and experiments show reasonable results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.39 no.5
• /
• pp.397-403
• /
• 2015

In this study, water distribution inside a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) was measured experimentally. Water distribution is non-uniform because of vigorous chemical reaction and mass transport and has been difficult to measure experimentally. Therefore, much research relied on indirect measuring methods or numerical simulations. In this study, several mini temperature-humidity sensors were installed at the channel for measuring temperature and humidity of the flowing gas throughout the channel. Only one of two electrode channels was humidified externally, and the humidity distribution on the other side was measured, enabling the observation of water transport characteristics under various conditions. Diffusion through the membrane became more vigorous as the temperature of the humidifier rose, but at high current density, electro-osmotic drag became more effective than diffusion.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.33 no.12
• /
• pp.1022-1030
• /
• 2009

Numerical analysis was carried out to investigate the effect of GDL (Gas diffusion layer) porosity on the performance of PEMFC (proton exchange membrane fuel cell). A complete three-dimensional model was chosen for single straight channel geometry including cooling channel. Main emphasis is placed on the heat and mass transfer through the GDL with different porosity. The present numerical results show that at high current densities, the cell voltage is influenced by the GDL porosity while the cell performance is nearly the same at low current densities. At high current densities, low value of GDL porosity results in decrease of the fuel cell performance since the diffusion of reactant gas through GDL becomes slow with decreasing porosity. On the other hand, for high GDL porosity, the effective thermal conductivity becomes low and the heat generated in the cell is not removed rapidly. This causes the temperature of fuel cell to increase and gives rise to dehydration of the membrane, and ultimately increase of the ohmic loss.