EN 604

Assignment 1 (50 marks)

Best before January 28, 2016

We will work with the honour system for assignments in this course. You will get the
marks assigned if you tell me you have done the assignment. You are supposed to do these
to the best of your ability but they will not be marked unless you specifically need feedback.
You can work with your project teammate on all assignments unless specified otherwise.
1. Toyota Mirai fuel tanks
As discussed in class, the Toyota Mirai stores H2 in two pressurized gas tanks. Your
task is to calculate the volume of the tanks and other associated data using the Redlich
Kwong equation of state (EOS):
P =

RT
a

v b v(v + b) T

(1)

P and T are pressure and temperature while v is the specific volume and a and b
are constants that depend on the critical constants of the fluid. Go through your
thermodynamics textbook and the wikipedia entry to understand how to use an EOS.
(a) Can you rearrange equation (1) to solve for the specific volume? What form does
the resulting equation take? h5 marksi
(b) Calculate the volume of the two tanks in a Mirai. You will need information given
on the website. What is the total weight of the tanks? How does the weight of
the fuel compare to the weight of the fully charged tanks? h20 marksi
(c) Calculate the size and weight of a metal hydride tank for the given weight of H2
required for the Mirai essentially the same analysis you did for the gas tanks
above. This will require you to do some research. h25 marksi