Thermal impact on storage tank of natural gas vehicle during discharge process

To reduce the influence of thermal effects during discharge process for natural gas applications as vehicular fuel, the authors established a mathematical model of methane storage tank system during discharge process and solved the equations by method of Newton-Raphson and iterative algorithm. The results reveal that the lowest temperature occurs in the center of tank with temperature drop of 49.14°C, the average temperature drop of system is 42.78°C, and the discharge amount is 2.733 kg, with a performance loss approaching 24.5% at the discharge rate of 1.315 g/s. The inner temperature and discharge amounts can be changed by heating the wall of tank and increasing the thermal conductivity coefficient of adsorbents. Average temperature drop of system is about 20.1°C and discharge amount is up to 3.2065 kg, corresponding to discharge efficiency loss of 11.47% by changing the thermal conductivity from 0.2 to 0.5 and the wall temperature from 20°C to 50°C. The research on discharge dynamic performance at different discharge rates indicates that the heat supplied by tank wall is larger than natural convection does.