Effect of flowthrough cooling heat removal on the performances of MOF-5 cryo-adsorptive hydrogen reservoir for bulk storage applications

We numerically investigated the effect of flowthrough cooling heat removal on the storage and thermal performances of a 20 m3 MOF-5 cryo-adsorptive bulk hydrogen reservoir. To validate the models, detailed experimental measurements of flowthrough cooling using a 2.5 L storage tank filled with MOF-5 are used for the first time. As the hydrogen gas is charged into the large reservoir, the temperature of the system raise from 77 to 121 K. When the flowthrough cooling is active for ∼30 h, the average temperature of the adsorbent bed is cooled down to 77 K; this results in a hydrogen storage capacity of 460 kg at tank's maximum pressure of 4 MPa, which is even higher than the storage capacity of a cryo-compressed hydrogen tank equilibrated at 77 K and 4 MPa. Our work establishes that flowthrough cooling is an efficient heat removal approach for bulk hydrogen reservoirs filled with MOF-5.