Secondment period: 10 to 18 March, 2019.

Workpackage: WP2 “Development of cost efficient MH containers with a focus on their mass production”

During his one-week secondment to HZG, Dr. Lototskyy was involved in the coordination of overall project activities (midterm project meeting at HZG, 14-15 March 2019), as well as outlining plans of joint R&D (UWC, HZG and FESB) on the improvement of metal hydride containers for hydrogen storage and compression. Special attention has been paid to the optimisation of metal hydride filling density which, on the one hand, should be high enough to reduce void space in the container and to provide higher hydrogen storage capacity and effective thermal conductivity of the metal hydride bed, and, from the other hand, to be below limit of the safe operation of the container to avoid appearance of stresses caused by volume expansion of the metal hydride material during hydrogenation.

Following the discussions, the experimental procedure for measurement of stresses and related parameters of specially designed metal hydride containers has been outlined. The experiments are planned to be set up at UWC in July – October 2019 with participation of seconded FESB and HZG staff members. The results and plans of further studies are planned to be discussed during the second part of Dr Lototskyy secondment to HZG scheduled for November 2019.