Solution of Inverse Thermal Problem for Assessment of Thermal Parameters of Engineered H2 Storage Materials

I. Fedchenia, and B. van Hassel
United Technologies Research Center
East Hartford, CT
Published in 2011

Materials based H2 storage systems for light duty vehicles need to meet challenging performance targets that have been developed by the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership. On-board reversible metal hydrides are typically integrated with heat transfer surfaces, e.g. in fin and tube heat exchangers, in order to reject the heat of H2 absorption at a high rate which is set by the refueling time target.

An alternative approach is to mix metal hydride materials with materials that enhance thermal conductivity and compact the composite material in order to obtain a H2 storage system with a low volume. Compaction can cause thermal conductivity anisotropy due to the alignment of the thermal conductivity enhancing phase in a preferred direction. Quantifying the thermal conductivity anisotropy of the H2 storage material is the purpose of the COMSOL model that will be discussed.