Modeling and Simulation of Hydrogen Storage Device for Fuel Cell Plant Using COMSOL Multiphysics

O. Akanji, and A. Kolesnikov
Department of Chemical & Metallurgical Engineering
Tshwane University of Technolgy
Pretoria, South Africa
发布日期 2011

In this work, a 2D dynamic simulation for a portion of metal hydride based hydrogen storage tank was performed using computational software COMSOL 4.0a Multiphysics. The software is used to simulate the diffusion and heating of hydrogen in both radial and axial directions. The model consists of a system of partial differential equations (PDE) describing two dimensional heat and mass transfer of hydrogen in porous matrix.

The phenomenon of hydrogen adsorption/desorption is accompanied by thermal effects, such as heat release during adsorption, or heat consumption during desorption. The geometry of a metal–hydride based hydrogen storage reactor was simulated to properly investigate the absorption/desorption rates of hydrogen in/out of the system.