Measurement of the effective thermal conductivity of a Mg–MgH2 packed bed with oscillating heating

The magnesium–magnesium hydride–hydrogen-system (Mg–MgH₂–H₂) offers, because of its combined hydrogen and heat storage capacity, the possibility to design hydride heat pumps and heat stores. For such industrial application systems based on cylindrically formed reactors filled with an active magnesium powder, the effective thermal conductivity limits the time in which the metal hydride alloy is charged and discharged with hydrogen. Determination of this transport coefficient is of fundamental importance for the optimum design of magnesium hydride reactors. The complex interrelation of the different transport mechanisms in a metal hydride packed bed and the hitherto undefined rule that the solid effective thermal conductivity behaves as a function of the hydrogen concentration, requires a reliable and simple-to-realize measuring method so as to determine the effective thermal conductivity of a magnesium hydride bed. In the present study, a report is given for the first time on the initiation of a measuring technique with oscillating change of temperature in a non-permeated packed bed of fine-grained material. The measurement of the effective thermal conductivity can ensue by tailoring the problem-specific mathematical result to the experimentally recorded temperature-time function. The effective thermal conductivity of the magnesium hydride bed varies between 2 and 8 W/(m K) in a temperature range of 523–653 K.