• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.130-145
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• 2019

Widespread commercialization of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) is expected to be realized in various application fields with the advent of cost-effective fabrication of cells and stacks in high volumes. Cost-reduction efforts have focused on production yield, power density, operation temperature, and continuous manufacturing. In this article, we examine several issues associated with processing for SOFCs from the standpoint of the bimodal packing model, considering the external constraints imposed by rigid substrates. Optimum compositions of composite cathode materials with high volume fractions of the second phase (particles dispersed in matrix) have been analyzed using the bimodal packing model. Constrained sintering of thin electrolyte layers is also discussed in terms of bimodal packing, with emphasis on the clustering of dispersed particles during anisotropic shrinkage. Finally, the structural transition of dispersed particle clusters during constrained sintering has been correlated with the structural stability of thin-film electrolyte layers deposited on porous solid substrates.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.73-81
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• 2014

This paper describes the continuous flow operation of membraneless sodium perborate fuel cell using acid/alkaline bipolar electrolyte. Here, hydrazine is used as a fuel and sodium perborate is used as an oxidant under Alkaline-acid media configuration. Sodium perborate affords hydrogen peroxide in aqueous medium. In our operation, the laminar flow based microfluidic membranleless fuel cell achieved a maximum power density of $27.2mW\;cm^{-2}$ when using alkaline hydrazine as the anolyte and acidic perborate as the catholyte at room temperature with a fuel mixture flow rate of $0.3mL\;min^{-1}$. The simple planar structured membraneless sodium perborate fuel cell enables high design flexibility and easy integration of the microscale fuel cell into actual microfluidic systems and portable power applications.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.41-55
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• 2018

General polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC) operates at less than $80^{\circ}C$. Therefore liquid phase water resulting from electrochemical reaction accumulates and floods the cell which in turn increases the mass transfer loss. To prevent the flooding, it is common to employ serpentine flow channel, which can efficiently export liquid phase water to the outlet. The major drawback of utilizing serpentine flow channel is the large pressure drop that happens between the inlet and outlet. On the other hand, in the high temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell (HT-PEMFC), since the operating temperature is 130 to $180^{\circ}C$, the generated water is in the state of gas, so the flooding phenomenon is not taken into consideration. In HT-PEMFCs parallel flow channel with lower pressure drop between the inlet and outlet is employed therefore, in order to circulate hydrogen and air in the cell less pumping power is required. In this study we analyzed HT-PEMFC's different flow channels by parallel computation using previously developed 3-D isothermal model. All the flow channels had an active area of $25cm^2$. Also, we numerically compared the performance of HT-PEMFC parallel flow channel with different manifold area and Rib interval against the original serpentine flow channel. Results of the analysis are shown in the form of three-dimensional contour polarization curves, flow characteristics in the channel, current density distribution in the Membrane, overpotential distribution in the catalyst layer, and hydrogen and oxygen concentration distribution. As a result, the performance of a real area fuel cell was predicted.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2004.03a
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• pp.703-712
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• 2004

A variant of the magnetoplasma jet engine (magjet) is here proposed for airbreathing flight in the hypersonic regime. As shown in Figure 1, the engine consists of two distinct ducts: the high-speed duct, in which power is added electromagnetically to the incoming air by a momentum addition device, and the fuel cell duct in which the flow stagnation temperature is reduced by extracting energy through the use of a magnetoplas-madynamic (MPD) generator. The power generated is then used to accelerate the flow exiting the fuel cells with a fraction bypassed to the high-speed duct. The analysis is performed using a quasi one-dimensional model neglecting the Hall and ion slip effects, and fix-ing the fuel cell efficiency to 0.6. Results obtained show that the specific impulse of the magjet is at least equal to and up to 3 times the one of a turbojet, ram-jet, or scramjet in their respective flight Mach number range. Should the air stagnation temperature in the fuel cell compartment not exceed 5 times the incoming air static temperature, the maximal flight Mach number possible would vary between 6.5 and 15 for a magnitude of the ratio between the Joule heating and the work interaction in the MPD generator varied between 0.25 and 0.01, respectively. Increasing the mass flow rate ratio between the high speed and fuel cell ducts from 0.2 to 20 increases the engine efficiency by as much as 3 times in the lower supersonic range, while resulting in a less than 10% increase for a flight Mach number exceeding 8.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.319-322
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• 2009

This paper investigated environmental effects for passive, air-breathing, and vapor-feeding direct methanol fuel cells. In these experiments, experimental parameters are temperature($30^{\circ}C$, $40^{\circ}C$ and relative humidity(25%, 50%, 75%). From these experimental results, the water contents play a key role in terms of optimal ionic conductivity at the cathode catalyst layer. In case of pure methanol feeding, the performance is inversely proportional to the relative humidity. The water generation resulting from methanol crossover maintains ionic conductivity at the cathode. On the contrary, diluted methanol solution (50wt.%) lowers methanol crossover to the cathode. In order to increase ionic conductivity, the relatively high humidity is required to the cathode catalyst layer for the water generation. The relative humidity scales with the performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.77-83
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• 2021

Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) operates at high temperatures in range of 600-800℃. Since layers of SOFC are composed of different substances, different thermal expansion in SOFC can result in defects under high temperature conditions. For understanding relation between temperature field and the thermal deformation in SOFC, temperature and strain field were simultaneously estimated using thermographic phosphors by optical measurement. Temperature fields were obtained by the life-time method, and the temperature differences of one specimen was checked with thermocouple. The thermal deformation was estimated by digital image correlation (DIC) method with extracted phosphorescence images. To investigate the deformation accuracy of DIC measurement, thermographic phosphors were coated with and without grid pattern on aluminum surface. Simultaneous measurement of temperature fields and thermal deformation were carried out for YSZ. This study will be helpful to multi-sensing of temperature field and thermal deformation on SOFC cells.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.467-470
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• 2006

For a mobile application such as cellular phone, micro fuel cells should be extremely compact and thin. RHFC can be an alternative solution because RHFC gives higher power density than DMFC and does not need ahydrogen storage vessel In this paper, RHFC using methanol fuel is made as a novel planar design without a PROX. Both reformer and cell are made closely in a same plate to share the heater of reformer with the cell. The PBI membrane is used in the cell. The reason is that high temperature of reformer can cause a performance drop when perfluorosulfonic acid membrane such as Nafion is used such a high temperature operation also guarantees the higher CO tolerance to MEA catalyst. The cell is designed as an air-breathing type which the cathode of the cell is opened to the air. The commercial Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 steam reformer catalyst is packed in reformer channel. The active area of MEA is $11.9cm^2$ and the peak power density was $27.5mW/cm^2$.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.62-72
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• 2010

Solid oxide fuel cells(SOFCs) directly convert the fuel gases to electric energy through electrochemical reactions. The advantage of SOFCs is that they easily operate with diversified fuels such as natural gases owing to their high temperature operation. However, high temperature operation also incurs the challenge in enhancing long term reliability and durability of SOFCs. The most commonly used anode material is Ni/YSZ. This has, however, some drawbacks in terms of long-term reliability at high temperatures, hydrocarbon fuel usages, and so on, therefore the need to develop the new anode materials increases. This article summarizes the trend of the novel anode materials development of SOFCs.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.44 no.10
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• pp.589-595
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• 2007

Physical properties of sputtered YSZ thin film electrolytes on anode thin film by spray pyrolisis has been investigated to realize the porous electrode and dense electrolyte multilayer structure for micro solid oxide fuel cells. It is shown that for better crystallinity and density, YSZ need to be deposited at an elevated temperature. However, if pure NiO anode was used for high temperature deposition, massive defects such as spalling and delamination were induced due to high thermal expansion mismatch. By changing anode to NiOCGO composite, defects were significantly reduced even at high deposition temperature. Further research on realization of full cells by processing hybridization and cell performance characterization will be performed in near future.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.94-97
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• 2008