Impact of Geometric Parameters on the Absorption of Hydrogen in a Metal Hydride Reactor

In this work, a hydrogen reservoir of cylindrical form with 10 cm as diameter and 3 cm of height is considered. In order to guarantee a maximum absorption of hydrogen, a heat exchanger with fins has been added as a cooling system. The phenomenon has been studied numerically considering a two-dimensional aspect. The obtained governing equations of the absorption process are based on mass, heat and momentum conservation. In order to solve the mathematical model, finite volume method with the ADI (alternating direction implicit) technique has been used. The calculation code has been run in a computer with i5-2310, 2.90 GHz processor and 1.90 GB of RAM. In this paper, we present the impact of geometrical parameters such as the diameter of the hydrogen inlet port on the heat propagation within the hydride bed, as well as the evolution of the absorbed hydrogen mass. The results show that the dimension of the inlet port has a considerable effect on the heat transfer inside the reactor and consequently the hydrogen absorption process.