Multi-dimensional modeling and large-scale simulation of hydrogen absorption/desorption phenomena in metal hydride vessels (MHVs)

In this paper, a three-dimensional (3-D) hydrogen absorption/desorption model is applied to two different real-scale metal hydride vessels (MHVs). The model is then validated against experimentally measured metal hydride temperature and H/M ratio evolution data from a hydrogen charge/discharge cycle. The two experimental vessels were designed to have identical dimensions and contain the same mass of ZrCo (125 g), but one is loaded with copper fins and the other with copper foams. Since the real-scale vessel geometries involve several million computational grid points, a parallel computational methodology has been employed to reduce the computational turnaround time. This comparison highlights this substantial improvement in agreement between simulation and experiment obtained by conducting full-scale simulations of the whole MHVs. In addition to model validation, detailed key contours are analyzed to elucidate hydrogen charge/discharge characteristics in whole-scale MHV geometries. This study demonstrates the validity of our 3-D hydrogen absorption/desorption model for optimization of practical MHV design and operating conditions.