Liquid Hydrogen Tank Boil-off Model for Design and Optimization

Lightweight and dense hydrogen storage is critical to hydrogen’s feasibility in transportation applications. Cryogenic liquid hydrogen is denser than compressed gas and can be stored at low pressures, enabling lightweight tanks. To design liquid hydrogen tanks, engineers need to model how a tank’s pressure and temperature change during operation. This paper’s model is specifically designed to enable rapid numerical optimization of the tank’s design and operation, 2000 times faster in this paper’s example than other popular optimization methods. The model captures the essential physics for liquid hydrogen storage, filling, and extraction in transport applications. It includes a new prediction method for a resistive heater, a common tank pressure control device. The authors validate the model against liquid hydrogen tank ground test data provided by a fuel cell aircraft company. The model shows good agreement with the experimental data for both dormancy and fuel extraction tests. The model’s Python implementation is open source.