RESUMO

The paper presents results of the experiments on hydrogen absorption on metal hydrides using two metal structures: LaNi₅ and La_0.9Ce_0.1Ni₅. Different procedures were used for adsorption, submitting a constant pressure at the inlet, or increasing the inlet pressure in steps of 0.25 or 0.5 bar until achieving the target pressure. The mass flow rate was continuously monitored and analyzed. In some of the tests the flow rate was found to decay exponentially, as expected from the models. The flow rates and their decay were found to be similar for different intermetallic compounds, although, as expected, they occurred at different pressure levels. The flow rates for the tests done with pressure steps are comparable with those done with the imposed pressure procedure, but the final volume adsorbed was lower in the first case.