Intensification of hydrogen absorption process in metal hydride devices with novel corrugated fins: A validated numerical study

Abstract

Novel corrugated fins were proposed and applied in metal hydride devices in this paper. To simulate the hydrogen absorption process, we first validated the numerical models based on the finite element method. Then we investigated the effect of device geometry and turbulent flow of cooling water on the absorption performance. The optimized device with 5 mm fin height, 2 mm fin length and 13 fins was obtained, and the absorption time for 0.8 wt% saturation level was reduced by 32% compared with the traditional device with circular fins. It is found that the turbulent flow of cooling water has a great effect on enhancing the hydrogenation rate, and critical Reynolds number is 11,860. The heat transfer resistance drops from 0.140 K/W to 0.023 K/W when Reynolds number increases from 1780 to 11,860. Furthermore, the optimal turbulence modeling strategy was analyzed in detail. The predictions derived from the L-VEL model with wall distance initialization are far more accurate than those of other turbulence models and have the lowest computational time of 2118 s. Our new device is easy to be manufactured and has great potential for various alloy loads as well.