Numerical study of a magnesium hydride tank

International audience; Hydrogen storage in metal hydride tanks (MHT) is a very promising solution. Several experimental tanks, studied by different teams, have already proved the feasibility and the interesting performances of this solution. However, in much cases, an optimization of tank geometry is still needed in order to perform fast hydrogen loading. The development of efficient numerical tools is a key issue for MHT design and optimization. We propose a simple model representing a metal hydride tank exchanging its heat of reaction with a thermal fluid flow. In this model, the radial and axial discretisations have been decoupled by using Matlab (R) one-dimensional tools. Calculations are compared to experimental results obtained in a previous study. A good agreement is found for the loading case. The discharging case shows some discrepancies, which are discussed in this paper.