• Solar Energy
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.23-33
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• 1997

In this paper, performance of various working fluids is evaluated for the closed Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion(OTEC) power plant operating on Rankine cycle. The evaporator and condenser are modeled via UA and LMTD method while turbine and pump are modeled by specifying isentropic efficiencies. R22, Propane, Propylene, R134a, R125, R143a, R32, R410A and Ammonia are used as working fluids. Results show that newly developed fluids such as R410A and R32 that do not cause stratospheric ozone layer depletion perform as well as R22 and ammonia. The superheat at the evaporator exit and subcooling at the condenser exit do not affect the performance of the simple OTEC power cycle. Turbine efficiency and heat exchanger size influence greatly the performance of the Rankine cycle. Finally, it was shown that closed OTEC power plants can practically generate electricity when the difference in warm and cold sea water inlet temperatures is greater than $20^{\circ}C$.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.248-257
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• 2020

This study presents an initial design for a novel system consisting in a coupled nuclear reactor and a phase change material-based thermal energy storage (TES) component, which acts as a buffer and regulator of heat transfer between the primary and secondary loops. The goal of this concept is to enhance the capacity factor of nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the case of high integration of renewable energy sources into the electric grid. Hence, this system could support in elevating the economics of NPPs in current competitive markets, especially with subsidized solar and wind energy sources, and relatively low oil and gas prices. Furthermore, utilizing a prismatic-core advanced high temperature reactor (PAHTR) cooled by a molten salt with a high melting point, have the potential in increasing the system efficiency due to its high operating temperature, and providing the baseline requirements for coupling other process heat applications. The present research studies the neutronics and thermal hydraulics (TH) of the PAHTR as well as TH calculations for the TES which consists of 300 blocks with a total heat storage capacity of 150 MWd. SERPENT Monte Carlo and MCNP5 codes carried out the neutronics analysis of the PAHTR which is sized to have a 5-year refueling cycle and rated power of 300 MW_th. The PAHTR has 10 metric tons of heavy metal with 19.75 wt% enriched UO₂ TRISO fuel, a hot clean excess reactivity and shutdown margin of $33.70 and -$115.68; respectively, negative temperature feedback coefficients, and an axial flux peaking factor of 1.68. Star-CCM + code predicted the correct convective heat transfer coefficient variations for both the reactor and the storage. TH analysis results show that the flow in the primary loop (in the reactor and TES) remains in the developing mixed convection regime while it reaches a fully developed flow in the secondary loop.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.183-186
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• 2009

The crystalline silicon solar cell was one of the first to be developed and it is still the most widely used type. The photovoltaic cells will exhibit long-term degradation if the temperature exceed a certain limit. The purpose of this study is to investigate the possible of improving the performance of a photovoltaic cooling system. According to the results of the experiment, the thermal degradation of 44.63degrees was observed by cooling on the surface of photovoltaic cells. It is a decrease of 22.215percent of generating power. It is shown that photovoltaic cooling system is effected on improving the effectiveness of a photovoltaic out of power.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.189-189
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• 2012

Lead sulfide (PbS) nanocrystal quantum dots (NQDs) are promising materials for various optoelectronic devices, especially solar cells, because of their tunability of the optical band-gap controlled by adjusting the diameter of NQDs. PbS is a IV-VI semiconductor enabling infrared-absorption and it can be synthesized using solution process methods. A wide choice of the diameter of PbS NQDs is also a benefit to achieve the quantum confinement regime due to its large Bohr exciton radius (20 nm). To exploit these desirable properties, many research groups have intensively studied to apply for the photovoltaic devices. There are several essential requirements to fabricate the efficient NQDs-based solar cell. First of all, highly confined PbS QDs should be synthesized resulting in a narrow peak with a small full width-half maximum value at the first exciton transition observed in UV-Vis absorbance and photoluminescence spectra. In other words, the size-uniformity of NQDs ought to secure under 5%. Second, PbS NQDs should be assembled carefully in order to enhance the electronic coupling between adjacent NQDs by controlling the inter-QDs distance. Finally, appropriate structure for the photovoltaic device is the key issue to extract the photo-generated carriers from light-absorbing layer in solar cell. In this step, workfunction and Fermi energy difference could be precisely considered for Schottky and hetero junction device, respectively. In this presentation, we introduce the strategy to obtain high performance solar cell fabricated using PbS NQDs below the size of the Bohr radius. The PbS NQDs with various diameters were synthesized using methods established by Hines with a few modifications. PbS NQDs solids were assembled using layer-by-layer spin-coating method. Subsequent ligand-exchange was carried out using 1,2-ethanedithiol (EDT) to reduce inter-NQDs distance. Finally, Schottky junction solar cells were fabricated on ITO-coated glass and 150 nm-thick Al was deposited on the top of PbS NQDs solids as a top electrode using thermal evaporation technique. To evaluate the solar cell performance, current-voltage (I-V) measurement were performed under AM 1.5G solar spectrum at 1 sun intensity. As a result, we could achieve the power conversion efficiency of 3.33% at Schottky junction solar cell. This result indicates that high performance solar cell is successfully fabricated by optimizing the all steps as mentioned above in this work.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.34-42
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• 2016

The organic Rankine cycle (ORC) has been used to convert thermal energy to mechanical energy or electricity. The available thermal energy could be waste heat, solar energy, geothermal energy, and so on. However, these kinds of thermal energies cannot be provided continuously. Hence, the ORC can be operated at the off-design point. In this case, the performance of the ORC could be worse because the components of the ORC system designed based on a design point can be mismatched with the output power obtained at the off-design point. In order to improve the performance at the off-design point, a few components were replaced including generator, bearing, load bank, shaft, pump and so on. Experiments were performed on the same facility without including other losses in the experiment. The experimental results were compared with the results obtained with the previous model, and they showed that the system efficiency of the ORC was greatly affected by the losses occurred on the components.

• Journal of Bio-Environment Control
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.353-360
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• 2017

In this study, the design and performance test of the air to water heat pump capable of producing hot water for greenhouse heating by using the surplus solar heat inside the greenhouse and the air heat outside greenhouse as the selective heat source were conducted. The heat storage operations using the surplus solar heat and the outside air heat were designed to be switched according to the setting temperature of the greenhouse in consideration of the optimum temperature range of the crop. In the developed system, it was possible to automatically control the switching of heat storage operation, heating and ventilation by setting 12 reference temperatures on the control panel. In the selective heat storage operation with the surplus solar heat and outside air heat, the temperature of thermal storage tank was controlled variably from $35^{\circ}C$ to $52^{\circ}C$ according to the heat storage rate and heating load. The heat storage operation times using the surplus solar heat and outside air heat were 23.1% and 30.7% of the experimental time respectively and the heat pump pause time was 46.2%. COP(coefficient of performance) of the heat pump of the heat storage operation using the surplus solar heat and outside air heat were 3.83 and 2.77 respectively and was 3.24 for whole selective heat storage operation. For the comparative experiment, the heat storage operation using the outside air heat only was performed under the condition that the temperature of the thermal storage tank was controlled constantly from 50 to $52^{\circ}C$, and COP was analyzed to be 2.33. As a result, it was confirmed that the COP of the heat storage operation using the surplus solar heat and outside air heat as selective heat source and the variable temperature control of the thermal storage tank was 39% higher than that of the general heat storage operation using the outside air heat only and the constant temperature control of the thermal storage tank.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.108-113
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• 2016

III-V compound semiconductor based thin film solar cells promise relatively higher power conversion efficiencies and better device reliability. In general, the thin film III-V solar cells are fabricated by an epitaxial lift-off process, which requires an $Al_xGa_{1-x}As$ ($x{\geq}0.8$) sacrificial layer and an inverted solar cell structure. However, the device performance of the inversely grown solar cell could be degraded due to the different internal diffusion conditions. In this study, InGaP/GaAs double-junction solar cells are inversely grown by MOCVD on GaAs (100) substrates. The thickness of the GaAs base layer is reduced to minimize the thermal budget during the growth. A wide band gap p-AlGaAs/n-InGaP tunnel junction structure is employed to connect the two subcells with minimal electrical loss. The solar cell structures are transferred on to thin metal films formed by Au electroplating. An AlAs layer with a thickness of 20 nm is used as a sacrificial layer, which is removed by a HF:Acetone (1:1) solution during the epitaxial lift-off process. As a result, the flexible InGaP/GaAs solar cell was fabricated successfully with an efficiency of 27.79% under AM1.5G illumination. The efficiency was kept at almost the same value after bending tests of 1,000 cycles with a radius of curvature of 10 mm.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.9-17
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• 2019

Laser cutting cell of solar cells can achieve high voltage and efficiency through more array than conventional 6 inch cell compared to same area. In this study, we fabricated c-Si cutting cell with various lasers and laser conditions such as power, speed, and number of times. In the case of picosecond laser, excellent surface characteristics were obtained due to small surface defects and low thermal damage at the output of 20W and the speed of 100 mm/s. However, it is not possible to fabricate a cutting cell having good characteristics due to nonuniform cutting inside the wafer when the processing for forming a cutting cell is not sufficiently performed. For nanosecond lasers, the best wafer characteristics were obtained for fabrication of excellent cutting cells at a frequency of 500 kHz and a laser speed of 100 mm/s. However, the nanosecond laser has not been processed sufficiently in the condition of a number of times. As a result, it was confirmed that the wafer thickness was cut by $63{\mu}m$ of the cell thickness of $170{\mu}m$ in the condition of five times of laser process. It was found that more than 30% of the wafer thickness had to be processed to fabricate the cutting cell. After cutting the 6-inch cell having the voltage of 0.65 V, we obtained the voltage of about 0.63 V.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.39-44
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• 2009

Geothermal energy is the heat contained in the earth and its internal fluids. Geothermal energy is stored as sensible or latent heat. Supplied by both internal and external sources, it represents a vast supply which is only started to be tapped for generation of electric power. In general, this is natural dry or wet medium to high enthalpy steam at temperatures above $150^{\circ}C$. For some time, binary systems employing substances with a lower boiling point than water in a secondary circuit have been used to generate vapor for driving turbines at a lower temperature level. The utilization of binary plants and the possibility of production from enhanced geothermal systems can expand its availability on a worldwide basis. The geothermal electricity installed capacity is approaching the 10,000GW threshold. Geothermal energy is not present everywhere, but its baseload capability is a very important factor for its success.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.07b
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• pp.939-942
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• 2004

Al doped Zinc Oxide(ZnO:Al) films, which is widely used as a transparent conductor in optoelectronic devices such as solar cell, liquid crystal display, plasma display panel, thermal heater, and other sensors were Prepared by using the capacitively coupled RF magnetron sputtering method. In this paper the effect of RF discharge power on the electrical, optical and structural properties were investigated experimentally. The results show that the structural and electrical properties of the film are highly affected by the variation of RF discharge power. The optimum growth conditions were obtained for films doped with 2 wt% of $Al_2O_3$ and 200 W in RF discharge power, which exhibit a resistivity of $10.4{\times}10^{-4}{\Omega}-cm$ associated with a transmittance of 89.66 % for 1000nm in films thickness in the wavelength range of the visible spectrum.