Adequacy versus complexity of mathematical models for engineering an adsorbed natural gas device

Abstract

Deploying affordable and sustainable energy storage devices is one of the major pillars for changing the current energy systems. Natural gas (NG)/bio-methane storage for vehicle transportation is an existing technology where the gas is pressurized up to 250 bar. One possibility to reduce the compression and infrastructure costs of new installations is to use tanks filled with porous solids that can selectively adsorb and release methane. This is the so-called Adsorbed Natural Gas (ANG) concept, where pressure of storage is reduced to 30–60 bar while the energy density per tank volume is maintained. Many publications have focused on the development of a suitable material with pre-defined specifications on amount of methane adsorbed. There are much less publications dealing with the testing of these materials in a current device and even less publications on the implementation of an entire system for ANG. This publication provides a modelling approach with the view of the different stages of development of the ANG concept, from materials to the system. An example of methane storage in a reference adsorbent material (high-surface area activated carbon) is used to validate existing phenomena in the different models used.