Hydrogen gas filling into an actual tank at high pressure and optimization of its thermal characteristics

Abstract

Gas with high pressure is widely used at present as fuel storage mode for different hydrogen vehicles. Different types of materials are used for constructing these hydrogen pressure vessels. An aluminum lined vessel and typically carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) materials are commercially used in hydrogen vessels. An aluminum lined vessel is easy to construct and posses high thermal conductivity compared to other commercially available vessels. However, compared to CFRP lined vessel, it has low strength capacity and safety factors. Therefore, nowadays, CFRP lined vessels are becoming more popular in hydrogen vehicles. Moreover, CFRP lined vessel has an advantage of light weight. CFRP, although, has many desirable properties in reducing the weight and in increasing the strength, it is also necessary to keep the material temperature below 85 °C for maintaining stringent safety requirements. While filling process occurs, the temperature can be exceeded due to the compression works of the gas flow. Therefore, it is very important to optimize the hydrogen filling system to avoid the crossing of the critical limit of the temperature rise. Computer-aided simulation has been conducted to characterize the hydrogen filling to optimize the technique. Three types of hydrogen vessels with different volumes have been analyzed for optimizing the charging characteristics of hydrogen to test vessels. Gas temperatures are measured inside representative vessels in the supply reservoirs (H2 storages) and at the inlet to the test tank during filling.