High-pressure Metal Hydride Tank for Fuel Cell Vehicles

  • PDF / 752,818 Bytes
  • 7 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
  • 92 Downloads / 203 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


GG6.4.1

High-pressure Metal Hydride Tank for Fuel Cell Vehicles 1

Daigoro Mori, 1Norihiko Haraikawa, 1Nobuo Kobayashi, 3Hidehito Kubo, 3Keiji Toh, 3Makoto Tsuzuki, 2Tamio Shinozawa, 2Tomoya Matsunaga 1 Fuel Cell System Engineering Div., Toyota Motor Corporation, Susono, Shizuoka, 410-1193, JAPAN 2 Material Engineering Div. 3, Toyota Motor Corporation, Susono, Shizuoka, 410-1193, JAPAN 3 Corporate Technical Center, Toyota Industries Corporation, Obu, Aichi, 474-8601, JAPAN ABSTRACT A new type of hydrogen-absorbing alloy tank has been developed. The high-pressure metal hydride (MH) tank has been designed based on a 35 MPa cylinder vessel. The heat exchanger module is integrated into the tank. Its advantage over high-pressure cylinder vessels is its large hydrogen storage capacity, for example 7.3 kg with a tank volume of 180 L. Cruising range is about 2.5 times longer than that of a 35 MPa cylinder vessel system with the same volume. The hydrogen-charging rate of this system is equal to the 35 MPa cylinders without any external cooling facility. Furthermore, release of hydrogen at 243 K is enabled due to the use of a hydrogen-absorbing alloy with a high disassociation pressure, Ti-Cr-Mn alloy with AB2 laves phase. It is thought that the high-pressure MH system is one realistic option for fuel cell vehicles to achieve a cruising range of over 700 km. INTRODUCTION Fuel cell vehicles are expected as the ultimate clean vehicle. However, many issues remain, such as low temperature performance and cruising rage etc. In particular, consumers place a high priority on the achievement of an adequate cruising range. And in order to use hydrogen efficiently as a fuel, compacting it for mobile storage is a key issue [1]. In fact, the energy density per unit volume of hydrogen is only approximately 1/3000 of liquid gasoline fuel. Metal hydrides (MH) has been developed both side of hydrogen storage material and its application because of its high volumetric storage density. General weakness of all known metal hydrides working near room temperature is low mass density [2], and many trials have been made to increase mass density. The BCC solid solution MH of laves phase series is one of the promising researches. It is known that hydrogen storage capacity of this new concept metal hydride is twice as the conventional rare earth series alloys [3]. Then, alloys, such as Ti-V-Mn, Ti-V-Cr, Ti-V-Cr-Mn, and Ti-Cr (Mo, Ru) with BCC structure are developed [4], and it is reported that Ti-Cr-V based BCC alloy has 2.8 mass% of hydrogen storage capacity in recent year [5]. Based on the result of the above-mentioned material development, some trial that applies MH to on-board hydrogen storage tank, have been carried out. Our prototypes of MH tank using Ti-Cr-V alloy, which has 2.2 mass% of hydrogen storage capacity, have been tested by driving in the concept model of fuel cell vehicles [6]. This conventional MH tank is a part of safe and efficient “low-pressure” system by selecting the alloys that can charge/discharge at less than 1 MPa of hydro

Data Loading...