Numerical Simulation on Fast Filling of Hydrogen for Composite Storage Cylinders

Compressed gaseous hydrogen storage is widely used in hydrogen filling stations and fuel cell automobiles. As an effective filling is required to complete in a short time about 3 to 15 minutes, a high filling velocity is necessary which may lead to temperature rise and heterogeneity inside cylinders. In this research, a numerical method is proposed based on the finite volume method to investigate the thermal behavior such as temperature rise and distribution in the process of fast filling for the 15 L cylinder that designed by us. By numerical simulation, temperature, velocity and pressure distribution in the filling process are shown intuitively. Also, temperature and velocity gradients in the axial direction are obtained. In the simulation, parameters such as flow rates of fast filling are considered. Thus, curves of the temperature rise in the cases of different flow rates of fast filling are given. Furthermore, the limit of mass filling rate for the 15 L cylinder is obtained. The numerical results are compared with the existing experimental results and show high consistency.Copyright © 2008 by ASME