Numerical investigation of heat and mass transfer during hydrogen sorption in a mixture of AB2 – AB5 metal hydride for hydrogen storage

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents the investigation of a two dimensional coupled model of heat and mass transfer in a mixture of AB2 – AB5 metal hydride (MH) systems of a cylindrical configuration during hydrogen sorption using COMSOL 5.3a commercial software. The parametric study on the sorption process has been studied with variation of heat transfer coefficient (HTC), and activation energy (AE) to understand the effects they have on the reaction kinetics of the sorption process. The simulation results demonstrate the importance of mutual dependence between the temperature propagation in the body of metal hydride, the absorbed concentration of the hydrogen gas, and the gas pressure for the absorption of hydrogen gas in metal hydrides. The decrease in the activation energy is found to have significant effect on the dynamic performances of hydrogen absorption in the MH reactors with an increased amount of hydrogen conversion, whilst the variation of heat transfer coefficient displayed insignificant change in hydrogen conversion. The simulated results show good agreement with the experimental results obtained from HYSA Systems and were implemented for use in the STILL RX60-30L electric forklift fuel cell applications designed by HYSA Systems in the University of the Western Cape.