Dynamic modeling and thermal management of a Power-to-Power system with hydrogen storage in microporous adsorbent materials

Abstract

The increasing penetration of distributed renewable energy sources involves the development of efficient energy storage solutions. Hydrogen is a viable alternative, or complement, to electric batteries for long-term and high-capacity storage. This article assesses the benefits of hydrogen storage in microporous adsorption materials at room temperature. The integrated Power-to-Power system dynamic behavior is modelled. We assessed the system performance looking at hydrogen adsorption in four porous materials (MSC-30, IRMOF-1, NU-110, and C/Be2) at room temperature for high-storage capacity. Hydrogen storage in an empty pressurized vessel by means of mechanical compression only is evaluated for comparison of the previous cases. The best performance in terms of tank volume size and round-trip efficiency are obtained by adopting adsorbent materials as follows: C/Be2 > IRMOF-1 > NU-110 > MSC-30 > empty storage. Indeed, under the same operating conditions, the volume size of the storage tank is reduced by 38 to 88% compared to the empty vessel, and the round-trip efficiency gain ranges between 0.6 and 2.8 percentage points according to the properties of the adsorbent material. Finally, by filling the storage tank with adsorbent materials the DOE targets are met at a pressure from 45% (MSC-30) to 83% (C/Be2) lower than in an empty tank.