Development of dimensionless groups for heat and mass transfer in adsorbed gas storage

A new methodology for analyzing heat and mass transfer in gas storage via adsorption has been developed. The foundation behind the proposed methodology comprises a set of physically meaningful dimensionless groups. This paper presents a discussion regarding the development of such groups, based on the Buckingham-Π theorem, providing a fully normalized multi-dimensional formulation for describing transport mechanisms involved in adsorbed gas storage. Data from previous literature studies are employed for determining realistic values for the developed parameters. Then, a one-dimensional test-case problem is selected for illustrating the effect of the dimensionless parameters on the operation of adsorbed gas reservoirs. This problem is numerically solved, and the solution is validated against previously published literature data. The presented results demonstrate that higher heat of sorption values can lead to reduced discharge capacities if the increased heating is not properly removed, whereas larger Biot and Fourier numbers can increase the amount of gas recovered.