Hydrogen storage in branch mini-channel metal hydride reactor: Optimization design, sensitivity analysis and quadratic regression

Abstract Metal hydride is an encouraging way for H 2 storage owing to the large H 2 storage capacity and suitable physical properties. As a crucial equipment for reversible chemical reaction of metal hydride, we propose a new branch mini-channel reactor to promote heat transfer and reaction effectively in H 2 storage reactor, which can reduce more than 55% hydrogenation/dehydrogenation time compared with straight tube reactor. Meanwhile, the optimal performance of both reactors could be achieved at branch number of 3 and center distance of branch bifurcation point of 8.5 mm. The optimal and sensitivity analysis of 6 operation conditions reveal that both reactors performances are most sensitive to H 2 pressure and fluid temperature for hydrogenation and dehydrogenation, respectively. Moreover, quadratic response surface analysis indicates an extremely marked impact (99% believable probability) on the regression model, whose regression coefficient (R2) could achieve 0.9955.