Point taken, hydrogen can still have a place, but many obstacles...

Point taken, hydrogen can still have a place, but many obstacles to overcome eg storage.

Hydrogen Storage and Energy Group (HSEG) works on development of nano/microstructure novel materials for energy storage applications. We are working on energy storage systems including:

• Hydrogen storage materials for solid-state hydrogen storage application
• Hydrogen storage and production technology for on-board and stationary remote area power supply (RAPS) systems
• Materials for batteries technology, thermal management, EMI shielding, and 2D electrical conduction

Hydrogen is the fuel of the future, but a bottleneck to the realisation of hydrogen economy is its storage. The development of a safe and effective hydrogen storage material is key to hydrogen-based energy systems in a wide range of applications.

Figure 1. Advantages of hydrogen storage technology at Hydrogen Storage & Energy Group

A prototype for synthesis of new on-board hydrogen storage materials (HSMs) has been developed by our team. The hydrogen storage capacity of HSMs have been improved by optimizing the preparation and purification procedures and improving the volumetric and gravimetric capacities, hydrogen adsorption/desorption kinetics, cycle life, and reaction thermodynamics of potential material candidates.

HSMs for solid-state hydrogen storage applications, have been fabricated which have hydrogen storage gravimetric capacity of 2 wt.% (KgH₂/Kg materials mass) for carbonous nanomaterials at room temperature and 8 wt.% (KgH₂/Kg materials mass) for porous nanomaterials at 150 °C at relatively low pressure (≤ 40 bar).

We are optimizing our hydrogen storage technology to increase the yield and purity of HSMs to achieve large-scale production of related products, reduce cost and improve the efficiency.

• Carbon-based Nanostructures

Carbon-based nanotubes have been a popular candidate as the sorbent for solid-state hydrogen storage due to the low density, high surface area, and high stability properties. The nanotube structure provides storage sites for hydrogen atoms.

Figure 2. SEM images of carbon-based microtubes

Figure 3. Hydrogen adsorption and desorption kinetics of HSMs

• Composite and Porous Thin Films

A new porous material for the hydrogen storage has been developed by our team and showed superior hydrogenation properties as it stores hydrogen in porous structure during fabrication by electrochemical etching of hydrofluoric acid. These materials indicated high specific surface area and high chemical activity with hydrogen. Recent breakthroughs from our group in porous materials included that addition of catalyst by Spillover effect resulted in increase of the yield of samples per fabrication batch.