A number of peculiarities in sorption behavior of metal hydride beds depending on the reactor geometry have been discovered. Comparison of PCT absorption and desorption isotherms was conducted for the same 500 g sample of La0.9Ce0.1Ni5-alloy and two different geometries: horizontal half-cylinder and vertical annular. This approach gives the way to directly investigate the influence of the bed geometry on the hydrogen sorption properties excluding the effect of other factors. The influence of the internal stresses in the fine dispersed beds of intermetallic compounds on their sorption properties is discussed in the present study. The occurrence of internal stresses in the vertical annular metal hydride bed results in the decrease of the hydrogen equilibrium pressure, increase of the enthalpy and entropy of hydrogen absorption and decrease of pressure hysteresis due to significantly stronger decrease of absorption pressure compared to desorption. The analysis of SEM images of the sample taken from the bottom of the working autoclave showed the presence of a macro particle which avoided the dispersion due to the agglomerated particles around. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.