Development and Experimental Validation of An Automotive System Model for Slurry-Based Chemical Hydrogen Storage Materials

This paper presents system models for the slurry-based chemical hydrogen storage materials being explored for fuel cell vehicles.  As a part of the Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence program sponsored by US Department of Energy, PNNL has developed and modeled systems for both exothermic and endothermic storage materials using Simulink® software.  The exothermic and endothermic materials modeled were ammonia borane and alane, respectively.  These models track the chemical constituents through all the components of the system including the reactor, phase separator, heat exchanger, and product and ballast tanks.  To validate the models, experiments with both simulants and actual materials were performed on scaled version of key components.  The model was then used with drive cycle simulations for an 80 kWe fuel cell vehicle to determine if the system can meet the DOE targets.  Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was performed to provide an operating envelope for other yet-to-be-developed chemical hydrogen storage materials.