(221b) High Capacity Metal Hydrides – Development towards Scaled up Tanks and Economical Evaluation

Hydrogen storage seems to be a major issue on the way to hydrogen mobility and usage of hydrogen as an energy vector. High capacity metal hydrides and composites, like sodium alanate and the Reactive Hydride Composites (see talks from Lozano and Jepsen) offer promising solutions, especially for applications involving the use of high or medium temperature heat carriers. These materials, some of which are extremely new, need to be developed from the milligram scale in which they were first synthesized to the kg and even Ton scale in order to be made available as applied storage systems. This requires the investigation of properties that are not the first priority of researchers looking for new materials: heat capacity and conductivity, porosity, cyclability, and especially the issues involving aging and deactivation. In this talk, the activities and techniques used to investigate hydrides at GKSS will be described on the example of sodium alanate, but also including other hydrides. Moreover, the final criterion for an energy storage system is its economic viability. Results will be provided showing that hydrides are a cost ? effective solution to the issue of hydrogen storage in the medium scale (tens of kg.)Hydrogen storage seems to be a major issue on the way to hydrogen mobility and usage of hydrogen as an energy vector. High capacity metal hydrides and composites, like sodium alanate and the Reactive Hydride Composites (see talks from Lozano and Jepsen) offer promising solutions, especially for applications involving the use of high or medium temperature heat carriers. These materials, some of which are extremely new, need to be developed from the milligram scale in which they were first synthesized to the kg and even Ton scale in order to be made available as applied storage systems. This requires the investigation of properties that are not the first priority of researchers looking for new materials: heat capacity and conductivity, porosity, cyclability, and especially the issues involving aging and deactivation. In this talk, the activities and techniques used to investigate hydrides at GKSS will be described on the example of sodium alanate, but also including other hydrides. Moreover, the final criterion for an energy storage system is its economic viability. Results will be provided showing that hydrides are a cost ? effective solution to the issue of hydrogen storage in the medium scale (tens of kg.)[1]

References [1] Jepsen, J. et al. submitted to Int. J. of Hyd. Ener.