Understanding of Thermal Characteristics of Fueling Hydrogen High Pressure Tanks and Governing Parameters 2013-01-0474

For safe and fast refueling hydrogen to fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs), a refueling protocol is under discussion at SAE J2601 to be a global standard. In order to realize such a standard, we have to estimate the relation between gas temperature and pressure during a refueling and for an accurate estimation we have to correctly understand the thermal characteristics of hydrogen tank.

Fast refueling test data has been offered by BMW-Powertech, some test cases have been analyzed by a simulation model developed by Monde et al. It reveals that the hydrogen temperature at the end of refueling does not exceed 85°C for these analyzed cases. The effect of the pressure drop between storage bank and hydrogen tank was negligible on the gas temperature at the end of refueling, although the gas temperature shows different profile depending on the pressure drop. The simulation results of the model in this study were in good agreement with the gas temperature profile obtained by BMW-Powertech test. Current analysis shows the total heat loss to the wall becomes smaller than 10% of the total inlet enthalpy.