Thermal effect and flow-through cooling of an adsorptive hydrogen delivery tank

The effective hydrogen storage technology is one of the most difficult challenges for the application of hydrogen energy, and activated carbon adsorption hydrogen storage has been considered as one of the promising storage methods. The thermal effect during adsorption process has a great influence on the hydrogen storage capacity. In this paper, based on a large-scale hydrogen delivery tank whose volume is 51.4 m3, we establish a two-dimensional axisymmetric model in Comsol. Then we research and simulate the thermal effect during the adsorption process under different charging conditions, and the effects of charging flow rate, pre-cooling and flow-through cooling on filling process are discussed respectively. The rates of feeding hydrogen and the effect of pre-cooling during the flow-through cooling process have been taken into consideration in order to improve the efficiency of hydrogen delivery tank packed with adsorbent material. The results show that the flow-through cooling combined with pre-cooling is an effective way to transfer the heat generated during adsorption process and increase the hydrogen storage capacity of the system.