The synthesis and catalytic activities over vanadium carbides were examined for ammonia decomposition reaction to produce the hydrogen. In particular, the comparison of vanadium nitrides were made on the ammonia decomposition reaction. The experimental data exhibited that BET surface areas ranged from 5.2 ㎡ /g to 25.6 ㎡ /g and oxygen uptake values varied from 3.8 μmol/g to 31.3 μmol/g. It is general that vanadium carbides (VC) were observed to be superior to vanadium nitrides for ammonia decomposition reaction. The primary reason for these differences were thought to be related to the extent of electronegativity between these materials. Most of vanadium carbide crystallites were exceeded by Pt/C crystallite. We assumed that the activities for vanadium carbide crystallites (VC) were comparable to or even higher than that determined for the Pt/C crystallite.

In this study, we investigated the deactivation characteristics of Ni-Zn-Fe electrodes due to intermittent operation in alkaline water electrolysis. To find suitable method to accelerate deactivation of electrode, the accelerated stress-test (AST) which repeated on/off step was performed with constant current/ voltage control. The AST under constant voltage control is suitable to deactivate electrode so it were selected to investigate deactivation of electrode. The AST which repeated on/off step in range of -1.3 V and 0 V was performed and the relationship between oxidation current and electrode deactivation in the off step was investigate. As results, it was confirmed that the nickel and zinc on electrode surface were oxidized due to anodic current which occurred at off step.

The intermittent characteristics of renewable energy complicates the process of balancing supply with demand. Electrolysis technology can provide flexibility to grid management by converting electricity to hydrogen. Alkaline electrolysis has been recognized as established technology and utilized in industry for over 100 years. However, high overpotential of oxygen evolution reaction in alkaline water electrolysis reduces the overall efficiency and therefore requires the development of anode catalyst. In this study, Raney Ni-Zn-Fe electrode was prepared by electroplating and the electrode characteristics was studied by varying electroplating parameters like electrodeposition time, current density and substrate. The prepared Raney Ni-Zn-Fe electrode was electrochemically evaluated using linear sweep voltammetry. Physical and chemical analysis were conducted by scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive spectrometer, and X-ray diffraction. The plating time did not changed the morphology and composition of the electrode surface and showed a little effect on overpotential reduction. As the plating current density increased, Fe content on the surface increased and cauliflower-like structure appeared on the electrode surface. In particular, the overpotential of the electrode, which was prepared at the plating current density of 320 mA/㎠, has showed the lowest value of 268 mV at 50 mA/㎠. There was no distinguishable overpotential difference between the type of substrate for the electrodes prepared at 80 mA/㎠.

As hydrogen utilization becomes more active recently, a large amount of hydrogen should be supplied safely. Among the three supply methods, liquefied hydrogen, which is an optimal method of storage and transportation convenience and high safety, has a low temperature of -253℃, which is complicated by the liquefaction process and consumes a lot of electricity, resulting in high operating costs. In order to reduce the electrical energy required for liquefaction and to raise the efficiency, hydrogen is cooled by using a mixed refrigerant in a precooling step. The electricity required for the precooling process of the mixed refrigerant can be reduced by using the cold energy of LNG. Actually, LNG cold energy is used in refrigeration warehouse and air liquefaction separation process, and a lot of power reduction is achieved. The purpose of this study is to replace the electric power by using LNG cold energy instead of the electric air-cooler to lower the temperature of the hydrogen and refrigerant that are increased due to the compression in the hydrogen liquefaction process. The required energy was obtained by simulating mixed refrigerant (MR) hydrogen liquefaction system with LNG cold heat and electric system. In addition, the power replacement rate of the electric process were obtained with the pressure, the temperature of LNG, the rate of latent heat utilization, and the hydrogen liquefaction capacity, Therefore, optimization of the hydrogen liquefaction system using LNG cold energy was carried out.

The present study discussed the thermodynamic analysis of the hydrogen liquefaction process to build a hydrogen liquefaction pilot plant with a small capacity (0.5 ton/day). A 2-stage Brayton cycle utilizing LNG/LN2 cold energy was suggested to be built in Korea for the hydrogen liquefaction pilot plant with a small capacity. Thermodynamic analysis on the effect of various variables on the efficiency of hydrogen liquefaction process was performed. As a result, the CASE in which the ortho-para conversion catalyst was infiltrated inside the heat exchanger showed the best process efficiency. Finally, thermodynamic analysis was performed on the effect of turbo expander compression ratio on the hydrogen liquefaction process and it was confirmed that an optimal turbo expander compression ratio exists.

Epoxy/carbon composite was used to prepare a bipolar plate for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Phenol novolac-type epoxy and diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA)-type epoxy mixture was used as a matrix and graphite powder, carbon fiber (CF) and graphite fiber (GF) were used as carbon materials. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the bipolar plate, surface-modified CF was incorporated into the epoxy/carbon composite. To determine the cure temperature of the epoxy mixture, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis was performed and the data were introduced to Kissinger equation in order to get reaction activation energy and pre-exponential factor. Tensile and flexural strength was obtained by using universal testing machine (UTM). The surface morphology of the fractured specimen and the interfacial morphology between epoxy matrix and CF or GF were observed by a scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

The water-gas shift reaction for the compact reformer was carried out at a gas hourly space velocity of 72,152 h-1 over the Cu-Nb-CeO2 catalysts prepared by co-precipitation method. In order to investigate the effect of Nb2O5 promotion over a Cu-CeO2 catalyst, the Nb2O5 loading amount was systematically changed from 0 to 5 wt.%. Among the prepared catalysts, the Cu-Nb-CeO2 (1%) catalyst showed the highest catalytic activity (CO conversion=61% at 400℃) as well as 100% CO2 selectivity. The high activity and stability of Cu-Nb-CeO2 (1%) catalyst are correlated to high Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area, small metallic Cu crystallite size, and enhanced redox property.

In this study, the purpose is to identify the risks of the facilities of packaged hydrogen stations. As a risk identification method, failure mode & effect analysis (FMEA), a qualitative risk assessment, was used to analyze failure mode and effects of component of each facility. The analysis criteria were used to derive the risk priority number (RPN) using the 5-point method according to severity, incidence, and detectability. The study analyzed a total of 141 components of 23 types that can be identified on the design of the packaged hydrogen filling station. As a result, 683 types of failures and their causes and effects were identified. and the RPN was number of a total of 1,485. Of these, 10 failure types with a RPN value of 40 or more were deemed necessary. In addition, a list of failure types with a severity score of 5 was identified and analyzed.

For the fault tree analysis (FTA) analysis of the packaged hydrogen filling station, the composition of the charging station was analyzed and the fault tree (FT) diagram was prepared. FT diagrams were created by dividing the causes of events into external factors and internal factors with the hydrogen event as the top event. The external factors include the effects of major disasters caused by natural disasters and external factors as OR gates. Internal factors are divided into tube tailer, compressor & storage tank, and dispenser, which are composed of mistakes in operation process and causes of accidents caused by parts leakage. In this study, the purpose was to improve the hydrogen station. The subjects of this study were domestic packaged hydrogen stations and FTA study was conducted based on the previous studies, failure mode & effect analysis (FMEA) and hazard & operability study (HAZOP). Top event as a hydrogen leaking event and constructed the flow of events based on the previous study. Refer to “Off shore and onshore reliability data 6th edition”, “European Industry Reliability Data Bank”, technique for human error rate prediction (THERP) for reliability data. We hope that this study will help to improve the safety and activation of the hydrogen station.

Recently, a fuel reforming plant for supplying high purity hydrogen has been studied to increase the operation time of underwater weapon systems. Since steam reforming is an endothermic reaction, it is necessary to continuously supply heat to the reactor. A fuel reforming plant needs a methanol-O2 catalytic burner to obtain heat and supply heat to the reformer. In this study, two types of designs of a catalytic burner are presented and the results are analyzed through the experiments. The design of the catalytic burner is divided into that the O2 supply direction is perpendicular to the methanol flow direction (Design 1) and the same as the methanol flow direction (Design 2). In case of Design 1, backfire and flame combustion occurred in the mixing space in front of the catalyst, and in the absence of the mixing space, combustion reaction occurred only in a part of the catalyst. For above reasons, Design 1 could not increase the exhaust gas temperature to 750℃. In Design 2, no flashback and flame combustion were observed, the exhaust gas could be maintained up to 750℃. However, the O2 distributor was exposed to high temperatures, resulting in thermal damage.