Sorption time based sizing of a solid-state hydrogen storage bed and thermal management system

Solid-state hydrogen (H2) storage is a promising technology for transitioning to a carbon neutral H2 economy. However, it is limited by the slow exothermic/endothermic reactions that occur during charging/discharging owing to the poor thermal conductivity of most solid-state H2 storage materials.  Although many researchers have addressed this challenge using various thermal management systems (TMSs), there is a lack of design tools available for sizing the reaction bed and TMS. This study aims to develop a multi-level model to size the solid-state storage system consisting of the reactor and the corresponding TMS. The sizing models are based on the sorption-time, an indicator that is crucial to the solid-state H2 storage technology. In addition, the proposed sizing procedure contains an inner loop and outer loop that apply the algebraic model (AM) and a combined lumped parameter model/computational fluid dynamics (LPM/CFD) model, respectively, resulting in marked reduction in solution time. Validations are conducted through comparison of AM predicted results with those of the experiments on solid-state H2 storage involving both internal and external TMSs. As the computational cost for the AM is negligible, the developed multi-level model facilitates the sizing of industrial-scale solid-state H2 storage systems with large or complex reactor beds and sophisticated TMSs.