• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
• /
• v.45 no.12
• /
• pp.772-776
• /
• 2008

The Korea Electric Power Research Institute (KEPRI) has been developing planar solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and power systems for combined heat and power (CHP) units. The R&D work includes solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) materials investigation, design and fabrication of single cells and stacks, and kW class SOFC CHP system development. Anode supported cells composed of Ni-YSZ/FL/YSZ/LSCF were enlarged up to $15{\times}15\;cm^2$ and stacks were manufactured using $10{\times}10\;cm^2$ cells and metallic interconnects such as ferritic stainless steel. The first-generation system had a 37-cell stack and an autothermal reformer for use with city gas. The system showed maximum stack power of about $1.3\;kW_{e,DC}$ and was able to recover heat of $0.57{\sim}1.2\;kW_{th}$ depending on loaded current by making hot water. The second-generation system was composed of an improved 48-cell stack and a prereformer (or steam reformer). The thermal management subsystem design including heat exchangers and insulators was also improved. The second-generation system was successfully operated without any external heat source. Under self-sustainable operation conditions, the stack power was about $1.3\;kW_{e,DC}$ with hydrogen and $1.2\;kW_{e,DC}$ with city. The system also recuperated heat of about $1.1\;kW_{th}$ by making hot water. Recently KEPRI manufactured a 2kW class SOFC stack and a system by scaling up the second-generation 1kW system and will develop a 5kW class CHP system by 2010.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.38 no.6
• /
• pp.602-608
• /
• 2014

Hydrogen energy, a field of low-carbon substitute energy, can be produced by fossile fuel reforming and electrolysis of water etc. We developed 1kW class flat type reformer for PEM Fuel Cells. The PEMFC is highly sensitive to carbon monoxide because CO has detrimental effects on the performance of the fuel cell. Thus, reformed gas supplied to Fuel cell system, which maintained CO concentration below 10ppm. After applying optimum drive condition, reformed gas was measured with gas chromatography and could find out about each experimental condition of $H_2$ and CO concentration. As a results, The 1kW class plate type hydrogen generation system's optimum condition is A/F ratio ${\alpha}=1.3$, STR temperature 1023K, S/C ratio 3, and $PrOx1{\cdot}2$ 30cc/min. It turns out that installation of PrOx 2 stage is more efficient for reducing CO concentration.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.236-242
• /
• 2012

This study has been carried out the experiment for the possibility of biogas reforming using waste heat. The source of this waste heat is the exhaust gas from a small-sized gas engine generator. For recovering the waste heat, Two-stage heat exchanger is manufactured. The two-stage heat exchanger is composed of a heat exchanger for the exhaust gas and a heat exchanger for the water. This two-stage heat exchanger is used for reforming the biogas by means of on-site hydrogen production at the small-sized gas engine generator. The two-stage heat exchanger is coupled with the biogas reformer which is a kind of catalytic reformer. To confirm a heat recovery efficiency of the two-stage heat exchanger, temperature differences of inlet and outlet locations are measured. Also, the variations of syngas concentrations with various biogas flow rates are investigated. As a result using manufactured two-stage heat exchanger, the biogas can be reformed from waste heat recovery. This experiment suggests that the exhaust gas heat exchanger is available for reforming the biogas.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2008.11b
• /
• pp.2198-2203
• /
• 2008

Hydrogen which can be produced through reforming process of hydrocarbon fuel is supplied into anode side of fuel cell system. In the fuel cell, only 70% of hydrogen is consumed through electrochemical reaction and 30% hydrogen passed by as anode off gas. When electrical output of fuel cell is within range of 1.0 to 3.0kW, burner for the reformer uses only anode off gas. And it uses mixture gas of anode off gas and LNG within range of 3.5 to 5.0kW in electrical output. CHEMKIN 4.1 program's Premixed code was used for calculating the properties of each gas. Results show that burning velocity and adiabatic flame temperature are 34.4cm/s, 1681.7K at equivalence ratio 0.8 within range of 1.0kW to 3.0kW and for cases of 3.5kW, 5.0kW, of electrical output, burning velocity and adiabatic flame temperature represent 30.5, 29.8cm/s and 1722.8, 1750K respectively. CO shows the lowest emission index at equivalence ratio 0.8 and NOx reveals the highest emission index at equivalence ratio 1.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.394-401
• /
• 2005

A nonthermal plasma-assisted fuel reformer was developed and the effects of operating variables on the performance of this reformer were studied. The $H_2$-rich reformed gas from the reformer was injected into a diesel engine under an idle condition and the effects of the amount of injected gas on the NO and soot reduction were investigated. It was found that with increasing electric power consumption, the degree of facility of ignition of the reforming reaction in the reformer could be enhanced. The performance of the reformer including $H_2$ concentration, $H_2$ recovery, and energy conversion was affected only by the O/C mole ratio. This was because the equilibrium reaction temperature was governed by the O/C mole ratio. With increasing O/C mole ratio, the $H_2$ recovery and energy conversion passed through the maximum values of 33.4% and 66%, respectively, at an O/C mole ratio between 1.2 and 1.5. The reason why the $H_2$ recovery and energy conversion increased with increasing O/C mole ratio when the O/C mole ratio was lower than $1.2{\sim}1.5$ appeared to be that the complete oxidation reaction occurred more enough with increasing O/C mole ratio in this low O/C mole ratio range and accordingly the reaction temperature increased. Whereas the reason why the $H_2$ recovery and energy conversion decreased with increasing O/C mole ratio when the O/C mole ratio was higher than $1.2{\sim}1.5$ appeared to be that the complete oxidation reaction was further advanced and the $H_2$ recovery and energy conversion decreased. As the weight ratio of reformed diesel to total diesel which entered the diesel engine was increased to $18.2{\sim}23.5%$, NO and soot reduction efficiencies increased and reached as values high as 68.5% and 23.5%, respectively.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.36 no.3
• /
• pp.343-350
• /
• 2012

A planar solid oxide fuel cell (PSOFC) is studied in its application in a high-temperature stationary power plant. Even though PSOFCs with external reformers are designed for application from the distributed power source to the central power plant, such PSOFCs may sacrifice more system efficiency than internally reformed SOFCs. In this study, modeling of the PSOFC with an external reformer was developed to analyze the feasibility of thermal energy utilization for the external reformer. The PSOFC system model includes the stack, reformer, burner, heat exchanger, blower, pump, PID controller, 3-way valve, reactor, mixer, and steam separator. The model was developed under the Matlab/Simulink environment with Thermolib$^{(R)}$ modules. The model was used to study the system performance according to its configuration. Three configurations of the SOFC system were selected for the comparison of the system performance. The system configuration considered the cathode recirculation, thermal sources for the external reformer, heat-up of operating gases, and condensate anode off-gas for the enhancement of the fuel concentration. The simulation results show that the magnitude of the electric efficiency of the PSOFC system for Case 2 is 12.13% higher than that for Case 1 (reference case), and the thermal efficiency of the PSOFC system for Case 3 is 76.12%, which is the highest of all the cases investigated.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.30 no.12
• /
• pp.1268-1272
• /
• 2008

Low temperature plasma applied with partial oxidation is a technique to produce synthesis gas from methane. Low temperature plasma reformer has superior miniaturization and start-up characteristics to reformers using steam reforming or CO$_2$ reforming. In this research, a low temperature plasma reformer using GlidArc discharge was proposed. Reforming characteristics for each of the following variables were studied: gas components ratio (O$_2$/CH$_4$), the amount of steam, comparison of reaction on nickle and iron catalysts and the amount of CO$_2$. The optimum conditions for hydrogen production from methane was found. The maximum Hydrogen concentration of 41.1% was obtained under the following in this condition: O$_2$/C ratio of 0.64, total gas flow of 14.2 L/min, catalyst reactor temperature of 672$^{\circ}C$, the amount of steam was 0.8, reformer energy density of 1.1 kJ/L with Ni catalyst in the catalyst reactor. At this point, the methane conversion rate, hydrogen selectivity and reformer thermal efficiency were 66%, 93% and 35.2%, respectively.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.17 no.9
• /
• pp.126-132
• /
• 2016

This study numerically investigates the characteristics of chemical reactions and thermal deformation in a steam reformer. These phenomena are significantly affected by the high-temperature burner gas and the process gas conditions. Because the high temperature of the burner gas ranges from 800 to 1000 K, the reformer tubes undergo substantial thermal deformation, eventually resulting in structural failure. Thus, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of the reaction and thermal deformation under the operating conditions to evaluate the reformer tubes for sustainable, stable operation. Extensive numerical simulations were carried out using commercial CFD code (ANSYS FLUENT/MECHANICA Ver. 13.0) while considering three-dimensional turbulent flows and combined heat transfer including conduction, convection, and radiation. Structural analysis considering conjugated heat transfer between solid tubes and fluid flows was conducted using the Fluid-Solid Interaction (FSI) method. The results show that when the injection temperature of the process gas and burner gas decreased, the hydrogen production rate decreased significantly, and thermal deformation decreased by at least 15 to 20%.

• 한국가스학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2000.09a
• /
• pp.192-199
• /
• 2000

• 한국가스학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 1999.09a
• /
• pp.93-99
• /
• 1999