• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2010

A PEMFC(proton exchange membrane fuel cell) is a good candidate for residential power generation to be coped with the shortage of fossil fuel and green house gas emission. The attractive benefit of the PEMFC is to produce electric power as well as hot water for home usage. The thermal management of PEMFC for RPG is to utilize the heat of PEMFC so that the PEMFC can be operated at its optimal efficiency. In this study, thermal management system of PEMFC stack is modeled to understand the dynamic response during load change. The thermal management system of PEMFC for RPGFC is composed of two cooling circuits, one for controling the fuel cell temperature and the other for heating up the water for home usage. The different operating strategy is applied for each cooling circuit considering the duty of those two circuits. Even though the capacity of PEMFC system (1kW) is enough to supply hot domestic water for residence, heat-up of reservior takes some hours. Therefore, in this study, time schedule of the simulation reflects the heat-up process. Dynamic responses and operating strategies of the PEMFC system are investigated during load changes.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.6-10
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• 2016

Until a recent day, degradation of PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells) has been mainly studied in unit cell. But operation and degradation of real PEMFC going along in stack instead of unit cell. Therefore in this work, ADT (Accelerated Degradation Test) of PEMFC was done in stack and the result from stack's test was compared with that of unit cell. The polymer electrolyte membrane was degraded by repeated electrochemical and mechanical degradation method among several ADT methods. Current densities of MEA at 0.6V decreased in stack and unit cell, 28.4% and 27.8% respectively after ADT for 312 hours. Hydrogen crossover current densities of membrane increased in stack and unit cell, 16.8% and 15.2% respectively after ADT for 312 hours. The result of ADT in stack was similar that of ADT in unit cell, which showed that ADT method of unit cell was available to the stack.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.425-429
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• 2014

Until a recent day, degradation of PEMFC MEA(membrane and electrode assembly) has been studied, separated with membrane degradation and electrode degradation, respectively. But membrane and electrode were degraded coincidentally at real PEMFC operation condition. During simultaneous degradation, there was interaction between membrane degradation and electrode degradation. Hydrogen permeability was used often to measure degradation of electrolyte membrane in PEMFC. In case of hydrogen permeability measured by LSV(Linear Sweep Voltammetry) method, the degradation of electrode decrease the value of hydrogen crossover current due to LSV methode's dependence on electrode active area. In this study hydrogen permeability was measured by gas chromatograph(GC) when membrane and electrode degraded at the same time. It was showed that degradation of electrode did not affect the hydrogen permeability measured by GC because of GC methode's independence on electrode active area.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.536-540
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• 2020

The support of the PEMFC membrane plays a key role in improving mechanical durability. The e-PTFE used as a support is chemically stable, so electro-chemical degradation in the PEMFC driving process has been rarely studied. In this study, we investigated whether e-PTFE is chemically stable to radicals and hydrogen peroxide during Fenton reaction. After the Fenton reaction, the main chain of e-PTFE broke, resulting in a change in the chemical structure and morphology of the support, resulting in a decrease in tensile strength. The results of this study showed that electrochemical degradation of the membrane ionomer in the PEMFC process occurs inside the membrane by radicals and hydrogen peroxide, so that electrochemical degradation may also occur at the e-PTFE support in the cell.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.660-660
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2255-2260
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• 2007

This Paper focuses on modeling and simulation to analyze the characteristic of hybrid vehicle. The system includes proton exchange membrane fuel cell(PEMFC), photovoltaic generator(PV), lead-acid battery, motor, vehicle and controller. Main electricity is produced by the PEMFC and battery to meet the requirements of a user load. When vehicle is parked in a sunny place, extra power is generated by the photovotaics and is charged in a battery for next drive. Further we evaluate usefulness of this hybrid vehicle by using ADVISOR - the advanced vehicle simulator written in the Matlab/Simulink environment. According to simulation results, the extra power obtained by photovoltaics which have been explored in nature conditions can help to reduce the electrical load of PEMFC and increase the efficiency (over 30%).

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.82.2-82.2
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• 2010

The development of bipolar plate having high efficiency and chemical properties has a major impact on fuel cell applications commercialization. Even though graphite bipolar plate has high electric conductivity and chemical resistance, it has demerits about mass production and brittle property for commercialization. Hence, metallic bipolar plate can be substitute for fuel cell bipolar plate. Although its inadequate corrosion behavior under PEMFC environment lead to a deterioration of membrane by dissolved metal ions, metallic bipolar plate for PEMFC is more suitable for automotive and residential power generation system because of its high mechanical strength, low gas permeability and applicability to mass production. Therefore, several types of coating has been applied to prevent corrosion and oxide film growth and to achieve more high durability. This work presents durability of coated metal bipolar plate for low temperature PEMFC which made for fuel cell vehicle. This results showed surface treatment increase long-term durability, even electric conductivity and corrosion resistance.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.85.2-85.2
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• 2010

There is widespread effort to develop polymer membranes in place of Nafion for high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell(PEMFC). In our study, SiO2 membranes are arranged by electrospinning method. For impregnation solution, the modified sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone)(SPEEK) polymer is prepared from sulfonation, sulfochlorination, partial reduction and lithiation reaction. The modified polymer is cross-linked with 1,4-diiodobetane in NMP solvent and then blended with Heteropoly acid(HPA). The characterization of membranes is confimed by FT-IR, Thermogravimetry(TGA), water uptake test and single cell performance test for PEMFC, etc. The composite membrane shows satisfactory thermal and mechanical properties. Beside, The membrane exhibits good ion exchange capacity and high proton conductivity. As a result, The composite membrane is promising as an alternative membrane in high temperature PEMFC.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.291-295
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• 2005

The PEMFC behavior is quite complex and is influenced by several factors, including composition and structure of electrodes and membrane type. Fabrication of MFA is important factor for proton exchange membrane fuel cell. MFA of PEMFC with hot pressing and direct coating method were prepared, and performances were evaluated and compared each other. The effect of MEA preparation methods, hot pressing methods and direct coating methods, on the cell performance was analyzed by impedance spectroscopy and SEM. The performance of PEMFC wi th direct coat ing method was better than wi th hot pressing method because membrane internal resistance and membrane-:-interfacial resistance were reduced by elimination of hot pressing process in MEA fabrication. In addition the micro structure of MEA with direct coating method reveals uniform interface between membrane and catalyst layer.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.572-575
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• 2008

Flow-field design has much influence over the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) because it affects the pressure magnitude and distribution of the reactant gases. To obtain the pressure magnitude and distribution of reactant gases in four kinds of flow-field designs without additional measurement equipment, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed. After the CFD analysis, the performance values of PEMFC according to the flow-field configurations were measured via a single cell test. As expected, the pressure differences due to different flow-field configurations were related to the PEMFC performance because the actual performance results showed the same tendency as the results of the CFD analysis. A large pressure drop resulted in high PEMFC performance. So, the single serpentine configuration gave the highest performance. On the other hand, the parallel flow-field configuration gave the lowest performance because the pressure difference between inlet and outlet was the lowest.