• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.476-483
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• 2012

Proper water management is crucial for the efficient operation of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell. Especially, for automotive applications, A novel water management that can avoid both membrane dry-out and flooding is a very important task to achieve good performance and efficiency of PEM fuel cells. The aim of this study is to investigate the liquid water behavior on the gas diffusion layer (GDL) surface and in the cathode flow channel of a PEM unit fuel cell under flooding conditions. For this purpose, a transparent unit fuel cell is devised and fabricated by modifying the conventional PEM fuel cell design. The results of water droplet behavior under flooding conditions are mainly presented. The water distributions in the cathode flow channels with cell operating voltage are also compared and analyzed. Through this work, it is expected that the data obtained from this fundamental study can be effectively used to establish the basic water management strategy in terms of water removal from the flow channels in a PEM fuel cell stack.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.191-198
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• 2003

The pairwise energy model (PEM) assumes that the cross section for the reaction cross section for the reaction A+BC$\{leftrightarrow}$B+C, where B and C are isotopes of hydrogen, depends on only the pairwise relative energy Es between A and B. Until now, the PEM has been used to interpret theoretically the isotope effect for the reactions such as $O(^3P)+HD,\;Ar^++(H_2,\;D_2,and\;HD)$. In this paper we carry out extensive quasiclassical trajectory calculations for the three possible reactions $Cl+H_2$ and HD and show that the PEM works very well at high energy. In particular we are able to accurately predict the intramolecular isotope effect at high energy for the reaction of Cl+HD using only the cross section data for $Cl+H_2$. To understand that the PEM works so well at high energy, the internal energy distributions for the products are examined. The distributions for three reactions are different at a fixed relative collision energy E but are approximately same at a fixed pairwise energy Es. This suggests that the PEM works very well at high energy. We believe the conclusions reached here will apply to other A+BC systems.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.788-795
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• 2013

A magnesium bipolar plate whose surface was protected by thinly deposited silver layer was investigated as an alternative to existing graphite bipolar plate of PEM fuel cells. Thin silver layer of $3{\mu}m$ was deposited on a magnesium alloy substrate by physical vapor deposition (PVD) method in an environment of $180^{\circ}C$. A number of tests were conducted on the fabricated magnesium based bipolar plates to determine their suitability for use in PEM fuel cell stacks. The test on corrosion resistance in the same pH condition as in a PEM operation demonstrated the layer protected the magnesium alloy substrate, while unprotected substrate suffered from severe corrosion. The contact resistance of the fabricated bipolar plate was less than $20m{\Omega}-cm^2$ which was superior to the conventional bipolar plates. A single cell was constructed using the fabricated bipolar plates and power output was measured. Due to the enhanced conductivity caused by low contact resistance, slight increase was observed in current density and output voltage. With low density of the magnesium substrate and ease on machining, the weight reduction of the stack of 30~40 % is possible to produce the same power output.

• 한국전기화학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.58-58
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• 2005

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.124.2-124.2
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• 2010

Generally, a coolant of the nuclear power plant is manufactured by electrolyzing the sea water near the plant for making the sodium hypochlorite(NaOCl), which is used for sterilizing the bacteria and the shellfishes sticking to the drains or the pumps at the outlet of the cooling system due to $8-10^{\circ}C$ warmer temperature than the inlet sea water. During manufacturing the sodium hypochlorite, the hydrogen with the high purity is also produced at the anode side of the electrolyzer. This paper describes a novel power plant system combined with the polymer electrolyte membrane(PEM) fuel cell, the wasted hydrogen from the sea water electrolyzer and the wasted heat of the nuclear power plant. The present status over the exhausted hydrogen at twenty nuclear power plants in Korea was investigated in this study, from which an available power generation is estimated. Furthermore, the economic feasibility of the PEM fuel cell power plant is also evaluated by a current regulations over the power production and exchange using a renewable energy shown in Korea Power Exchange(KRX).

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.554-557
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• 2005

The bipolar plate is a major component of the PEM fuel cell stack, which takes a large portion of stack cost. In this study, as alternative materials for bipolar plate of PEM fuel cells, graphite composites were fabricated by compression molding. Graphite particles mixed with epoxy resin were used as the main substance to provide electric conductivity. To achieve desired electric properties, specimens made with different mixing ratio, processing pressure and temperature were tested. To increase mechanical strength, one or two layer of woven carbon fabric were added to the original graphite and resin composite. Thus, the composite material is consisted of the three phases: graphite particles, epoxy resin, and carbon fabric. By increasing mixing ratio, fabricated pressure and process temperature, electric conductivity was improved. The results of tensile test showed that the tensile strength of two-phase graphite composite was about 5MPa, and that of three-phase composite was increased to 54MPa.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.8-15
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• 2007

Liquid water in flow channel is an important factor that limits the steady and transient performance of PEM fuel cells. A computational fluid dynamics study based on the volume-of-fluid [VOF] multi-phase model was conducted to understand the two-phase flow behavior of liquid water in cathode gas channels. The liquid water transport in $180^{\circ}{\Delta}$ bends was investigated, where the effects of surface characteristics (hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces], channel geometries (rectangular and chamfered corners], and air velocity in channel were discussed. The two-phase flow behavior of liquid water with hydrophilic channel surface and that with hydrophobic surface was found very different; liquid water preferentially flows along the corners of flow channel in hydrophilic channels while it flows in rather spherical shape in hydrophobic channels. The results showed that liquid water transport was generally enhanced when hydrophobic channel with rounded corners was used. However, the surface characteristics and channel geometries became less important when air velocity was increased over 10m/s. This study is believed to provide a useful guideline for design optimization of flow patterns or channel configurations of PEM fuel cells.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.202-210
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• 2011

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell is one of the popular renewable energy sources and widely used in commercial medium power areas from portable electronic devices to electric vehicles. In addition, the increased integration of the PEM fuel cell with power electronics, dynamic loads, and control systems requires accurate electrical models and simulation methods to emulate their electrical behaviors. Advancement in parallel computation techniques, various real-time simulation tools, and smart power hardware have allowed the prototyping of novel apparatus to be investigated in a virtual system under a wide range of realistic conditions repeatedly, safely, and economically. This paper builds up advancements of optimized model constructions for a fuel cell stack system on a real-time simulator in the view points of improving dynamic model accuracy and boosting computation speed. In addition, several considerations for a power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulation are provided to electrically emulate the PEM fuel cell stack system with power facilities. The effectiveness of the proposed PHIL simulation method developed on Opal RT's RT-Lab Matlab/Simulink based real-time engineering simulator and a programmable power supply is verified using experimental results of the proposed PHIL simulation system with a Ballard Nexa fuel cell stack.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.5 s.248
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• pp.489-495
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• 2006

Proton exchange membrane (PEM) should be sufficiently hydrated with a careful consideration of heat and water management. Water management has been a critical operation issue for better understanding the operation and optimizing the performance of a PEM fuel cell. The flooding on cathode side resulting from excess water can limit the fuel cell performance. In this study, the visual cell was designed and fabricated fur the visualization of liquid water droplet dynamics related to cathode flooding in flow channels. The experiment was carried out to observe the formation, growth and removal of water droplets using CCD imaging system. Effects of operating conditions such as cell temperature, air flow rate and air relative humidity on cathode flooding characteristics were mainly investigated. Based on this study, we can get the basic insight into flooding phenomena and its two-phase flow nature. It is expected that data obtained can be effectively used fur the setup and validation of two-phase PEM fuel cell models considering cathode flooding.