Transient Thermal Characteristics of a Hydrogen Storage Getter Bed: Use of a Simplified Model with Enhanced Accuracy

Abstract

Adsorption of hydrogen on certain metals to form a reversible metal hydride has been known to be one of the most compact and safe methods of storing and immobilizing hydrogen gas and its isotopes. Dynamic thermal analysis of a uranium based getter bed for storage of upto 50 gm hydrogen has been performed in this work. The storage bed has been considered as a pseudo-homogeneous batch reactor with an initial charge of hydrogen and uranium. The vessel dimensions have been assumed similar to the metal alloy canisters available commercially for hydrogen storage. Both heating and cooling systems have been considered available for the beds. The model equations consist of a system of ordinary differential equations and constitutive laws. Variation of bed and coolant temperature, gas pressure and other vessel scale parameters with time, while incorporating particle level transport phenomena and their effects, has been evaluated through a simplified analysis. Effect of temperature dependent cooling and heating has also been investigated. The model enables fast and realistic estimates of getter bed performance under different hydriding conditions with emphasis on the total hydriding time.

Keywords: Batch reactor, Dynamic model, Getter bed, Hydriding, Hydrogen storage, Transient characteristics.

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