A Method to Enhance the Heat Transfer Mechanism in Metal Particle Porous Beds with Applicability to Paramagnetic Materials for Hydrogen Storage

This research introduces a heat transfer enhancement method for porous beds of either ferromagnetic and paramagnetic materials. Throughout this work, it is shown that applying magnetic fields, not only enhances the heat transfer rate in particle beds but also improves hydrogenation properties of lanthanum nickel. The first section of the work is focused on heat transfer in iron oxide beds under magnetism. This stage studies effect of different magnetic field configurations and intensities on conduction improvement. The second phase of the work, studies the effect of utilizing magnetic fields on hydriding properties of a selected metal hydride.;Experimentation has proven the positive effect (between 11 -- 17 % depending on experimental configuration) of applying magnetic fields on both heat transfer rates in porous beds and hydrogen absorption in lanthanum nickel.