Study of the Structural-Phase State and Heat Transfer in a Metal Hydride Hydrogen Storage System

One of the most important tasks in improving the performance of metal hydride reactors is the development of heat exchangers. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account both the efficiency of heat exchangers and their mass and volume occupied by them. In this regard, the issue of determining the optimal configuration of the heat exchanger is being considered. In this work, several variants of fins (disks) for a U-shaped cooling tube heat exchanger are considered using numerical simulation methods. According to the simulation results obtained, the average temperature of the LaNi5 bed depends more on the number of disks than on their configuration. However, based on the need to minimize the parasitic volume in the metal hydride tank, disks of complex configuration are an interesting solution. By comparing the selected disk geometries, it is shown that three disks of complex configuration correspond to the optimal volume occupied in the metal hydride tank and the average temperature of the metal hydride bed.