Hydrogen has been widely recognized as a potential energy carrier of the future. However, effective and safe storage and delivery are the major bottlenecks in its deployment, especially for mobile and portable applications. Solid state hydrogen storage devices offer beneficial features such as high volumetric storage capacity, fast reaction kinetics, large number of charge discharge cycles and safety. Heat transfer is the main sorption rate controlling factor in such storage devices. A large variety of intermetallic hydriding alloys have been investigated, but the specified storage limit of at least 5 wt% of hydrogen has not been achieved with simple metal hydrides. Non-transition metal hydrides, also known as complex metal hydrides, have been shown to have a high hydrogen storage capacity and are relatively inexpensive. Thermal simulation of such devices is more complicated than simple metal hydrides due to the complex chemical reactions, sometimes involving more than one phase. Moreover, their low effective thermal conductivity and high sorption heat are major drawbacks. Weight optimized geometric configurations for such devices need to be developed, especially for mobile and portable applications. In this talk, various heat and mass transfer related issues on the performance and design of solid state hydrogen storage devices, especially with complex hydrides are discussed.
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