Prediction of the thermal conductivity of metal hydrides – The inverse problem

With sustainability as an important and driving theme, not merely of research, but that of our existence itself, the effort in developing sustainable systems takes many directions. One of these directions is in the transport sector, particularly personal transport using hydrogen as fuel, which logically leads on to the problem of hydrogen storage. This paper deals with the prediction of the effective conductivity of beds of metal hydride for hydrogen storage. To enable modeling of the effective thermal conductivity of these systems, it is necessary to arrive at the functional dependence of the thermal conductivity of the solid hydride on its hydrogen concentration or content. This is the inverse problem in thermal conductivity of multiphase materials. Inverse methods in general are those where we start from known consequences in order to find unknown causes. Using published and known data of the effective thermal conductivity of the hydride–hydrogen assemblage, we arrive at the unknown hydride conductivity by analysis. Among the models available in the literature for determination of the effective conductivity of the bed from the properties of the constituent phases, the model of Raghavan and Martin is chosen for the analysis as it combines simplicity and physical rigor. The result is expected to be useful for predicting the thermal conductivity of hydride particles and determining the optimum heat transfer rates governing the absorption and desorption rates of hydrogen in the storage system.