Thermodynamic peculiarities of low-temperature regeneration of cryosorption devices in heat-insulation cavities of hydrogenous cryogenic tanks

As a result of hydrogen leaks into heat-insulating cavities through microcracks as well as at the expense of gas release from the walls, a situation may arise related to untimely supersaturation of cryosorption pumps (CSP) with hydrogen (Gusev, Int. J. Alternative Energy Ecol. 1 (2000) 55–75, 103–108). As it is known, the complete regeneration of ceolyte CaEH-4B requires the temperature of 473 K. It is impossible to reach this temperature without terminating the technological storage process for built-in CSPs. To reduce a negative effect related with this situation the possibility of low-temperature built-in cryosorption device regeneration was investigated on the basis of the CaEH-4B adsorbent in a heat-insulating cavity of a hydrogenous cryogenic tank with substituting feeding. Using the Henry equation for the interval 20.2–32.0 K the desorption dynamics were obtained for gases sorbed by the adsorbent at a temperature of 20.2 K. The efficiency of using low-temperature adsorbent regeneration is shown for various temperature levels of cryogenic liquid (Gusev, in: V.A. Goltsov (Ed.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference “HTM-98”, Donetsk, 1998, p. 180). Based on experimental research a chemical chamber design is proposed. This makes possible the removal of hydrogen from the vacuum heat-insulating cryogenic tank cavity and monitoring the hydrogen absorption process according to the thermal chemical reaction effect.