Thermal Management and Enhancement of Adsorption Based Onboard Hydrogen Storage System

Although hydrogen has one of the highest specific energies, its energy density in terms of volume is very poor compared to liquid fuels. Thus to achieve attractive energy density for hydrogen, either high pressure compression or a storage method is needed. For onboard (vehicles) hydrogen storage, up to 700 bars are needed for commercial fuel cell vehicles. This creates extreme requirements for material strength and thus safety concerns. A new metal-organic framework (MOF-5) was selected as the adsorbent for H₂ storage, as it provides promising storage capacity and is commercially available. Under the same H₂ storage capacity and tank volume, the adsorption system is expected several folds reduction in pressure. Under the current study, a unique Modular Adsorbing Tank Insert (MATI) design paired with conduction enhanced compressed MOF-5 beds was introduced and experimentally compared for thermal performance, which determines system charge and discharge cycle times.