• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.255-260
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• 2011

$NH_4{^+}-{\beta}^{{\prime}{\prime}}$-alumina which is expected to an inorganic solid electrolyte of high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) was prepared by ion-exchange reaction of $K^{+}-{\beta}^{{\prime}{\prime}}$-alumina pellet with $NH_4NO_3$ aqueous solution and molten $NH_4NO_3$ salts as an ion-exchange medium in the autoclave and the heating mentle reaction. In the autoclave reaction, the concentrations of $NH_4NO_3$ solution was chosen at 5 and 10 M. Each ion-exchange reaction was carried out at 130, 150, 170, and $200^{\circ}C$ for 2, 4, 6 and 8 h. In the heating mentle reaction, ion-exchange was performed at $200^{\circ}C$ for 2, 4, 6 and 8 h with molten $NH_4NO_3$ salts. In order to determine the effect of reaction times, each ion-exchange reaction was repeated 3 times. The phase stability and the ion-exchange rate of $NH_4{^+}-{\beta}^{{\prime}{\prime}}$-alumina were analyzed by XRD and ICP.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 2014

This paper proposes a modeling of fuel cell which replaces dc source during simulation. Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that convert chemical energy in fuels into electrical energy. This system has high efficiency and heat, no environmental chemical pollutions and noise. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are commonly used as a residential generator. These fuel cells have different electrical characteristics such as a low voltage and high current compared with solar cells. And there are different behaviors in the V-I curve in the temperature and pressure. Therefore, the modeling of fuel cell should consider wide voltage range and slow current response and the resulting electrical model is applied to boost converter with fuel cell as an input source.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.601-607
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• 2019

Ammonia would be formed in natural gas containing small amount of nitrogen reforming process in the process natural gas, which might damage the Pt catalyst and Prox catalyst. In the article, the effect of nitrogen contents on the formation of ammonia in the reforming process has been studied. In the experiments, Ru based and Ni based catalysts were used and the concentration of ammonia in the reformate gas at various gas hourly space velocity was measured. Experimental result shows that relatively higher ammonia concentration was measured with Ru based catalyst than with Ni based catalyst. It also shows that the concentration of ammonia increased rapidly after most of the methane converted into hydrogen. Based on the experimental results to reduce ammonia concentration it might be better to finish methane conversion at the exit position of the reforming reactor to minimize the contact time of catalyst and nitrogen with high concentration of hydrogen.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.471-480
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• 2017

A proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) operated at $150^{\circ}C$ was evaluated by a controlling different amount of phosphoric acid (PA) to a membrane-electrode assembly (MEA) without humidification of the cells. The effects on MEA performance of the amount of PA in the cathode are investigated. The PA content in the cathodes was optimized for higher catalyst utilization. The highest value of the active electrochemical area is achieved with the optimum amount of PA in the cathode confirmed by in-situ cyclic voltammetry. The current density-voltage experiments (I-V curve) also shows a transient response of cell voltage affected by the amount of PA in the electrodes. Furthermore, this information was compared with the production variables such as hot pressing and vacuum drying to investigate those effect to the electrochemical performances.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.3440-3445
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• 2007

For proton exchange membrane fuel cell, it is very important to design the flow channel on separation plate optimally to maximize the current density at same electrochemical reaction surface and reduce the concentration polarization occurred at high current density. In this paper, three dimensional computation model including anode and cathode domain together was developed to examine effects of flow patterns and operation conditions such as humidity and operating temperature on performance of fuel cell. Results show that voltage at counter flow condition is higher than that at coflow condition in parallel and interdigitated flow pattern. And fuel cell with interdigitated flow pattern which has better mass transport by convection flow through gas diffusion layer has higher performance than with parallel flow pattern but its pressure drop is increased such that the trade off between performance and pressure drop should be considered for selection of flow pattern of fuel cell.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.105-108
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• 2006

The fuel cell is one of the promising environment-friendly energy sources for the next generation. The fuel cell provides good energy efficiency above 40% without pollution or noise. Different fuel cell types are usually distinguished by the kind of electrolyte. Among these, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has advantages of high power density. low operating temperature, relatively quick start-up, and rapid response to varying loads. The bipolar plate is a major component of the PEM fuel cell stack, and it takes a large portion of stack volume, weight and cost. In this study, as alternative materials for bipolar plate of PEM fuel cells, graphite composites were fabricated by compression molding and by machining. Graphite particles mixed with epoxy resin were used as the main substance to provide electric conductivity. Flow channels were fabricated by compression molding with design of experiments (DOE) to evaluate moldability. The cost for compression molding of graphite-composite bipolar plate was compared with machining cost to make the same bipolar plate.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.59-62
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• 2006

Formability is requested to successfully develop of a metal bipolar plate for mass production. From this point of view, wider channel and land width is more helpful to improve formability. But the performance of the fuel cell can be affected by its channel and land shape. So it is very important to select proper channel and land shape not to deteriorate the fuel cell performance. In this work, 3-dimensional, non-isothermal numerical simulation was performed to analyse the effects of channel and land width on the fuel cell performance. 3 types of straight channel were selected for the numerical simulation. The simulation results reveal that wide channel and land width lower fuel cell performance and decrease voltage at a high current density region. Water activity, temperature, oxygen concentration distributions were investigated to find the reasons of performance degradation. The results show that wide channel and land width give an bad effect on fuel cell performance because of low cool ins efficiency and lack of oxygen gas under the land.

• Composites Research
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.373-379
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• 2021

A series of novel PBI/SrTiO₃ nanocomposite membranes composed of polybenzimidazole (PBI) and strontium titanate (SrTiO₃) with a perovskite structure were fabricated with various concentrations of SrTiO₃ through a solution casting method. Various characterization techniques such as proton nuclear magnetic resonance, thermogravimetric analysis, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and AC impedance spectroscopy were used to investigate the chemical structure, thermal, phosphate absorption and morphological properties, and proton conductivity of the fabricated nanocomposite membranes. The optimized PBI/SrTiO₃-8 polymer nanocomposite membrane containing 8wt% of SrTiO₃ showed a higher proton conductivity of 7.95 × 10^-2 S/cm at 160℃ compared to other nanocomposite membranes. The PBI/SrTiO₃-8 composite membrane also showed higher thermal stability compared to pristine PBI. In addition, the roughness change of the polymer composite membrane was also investigated by AFM. Based on these results, nanocomposite membranes based on perovskite structures are expected to be considered as potential candidates for high-temperature PEM fuel cell applications.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.393-404
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• 2014

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been applied to not only military missions like surveillance and reconnaissance but also commercial missions like meteorological observation, aerial photograph, communication relay, internet network build and disaster observation. Fuel cells make UAVs eco-friendly by using hydrogen. Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) show low operation temperature, high efficiency, low noise and high energy density and those characterisitcs are well fitted with UAVs. Thus Fuel cell based UAVs have been actively developed in the world. Recently, fuel cell UAVs have started to develope for high altitude UAVs because target altitude of UAVs is expanded upto stratosphere altitude. Long endurance of UAVs is essential to improve effects of the missions. Improvement of UAV endurance time could be fulfilled by developing a hydrogen fuel storage system with high energy density and reducing the weight of UAVs. In this paper, research trend and analysis of fuel cell UAVs are introduced in terms of their altitude and endurance time and then the prospect of fuel cell UAVs are shown.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.278-289
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• 2010

A series of composite membranes based on sulfonated poly(arylene ether sulfone) (SPAES) were prepared via addition of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and solution casting method. The morphological structure, water uptake, proton conductivity of the resulting composite membranes were extensively investigated as function of the content of TEOS. By the sol-gel reaction, TEOS molecules were not completely converted to $SiO_2$ particles, but formed only oligomer-type. Also, EDS confirms that the resulting silicon dioxide was homogeneously distributed in the composite membranes. As the content of TEOS increased, the prepared membranes increased water uptake and proton conductivity at high temperature and low relative humidity condition. In particular, considerably high proton conductivity (0.015 S/cm) at $120^{\circ}C$ and 48%RH was demonstrated in the composite membrane containing 200% TEOS, which is 10 times greater than that of unmodified SPAES membrane. Also, the composite membranes were found to have enhanced thermal stability compared to the unmodified membrane.