Storing hydrogen easily: a solution comes from California
Increasing global hydrogen capacity, particularly green hydrogen – produced by electrolysis powered by renewable energy sources, a process that emits no carbon dioxide – has generated great excitement. However, one of the main challenges to using hydrogen is how it is stored.
Hydrogen can be stored as a gas or as a liquid. As a gas, it can be stored in high-pressure tanks and as a liquid at cryogenic temperatures, to prevent it from reducing to a gas – at around -252.8°C. It can also be stored in solid materials through an adsorption process. Storage of hydrogen for practical use presents several challenges. For example, transportation that uses hydrogen currently cannot contain the large quantities of compressed fuel needed to travel long distances. Furthermore, current storage solutions are very inefficient and lose large amounts of energy in the process.
The development of effective hydrogen storage solutions is critical to the advancement of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in applications. Hydrogen has the highest energy per mass of any fuel, but a high-tech storage solution is needed to ensure the fuel or gas can be used effectively, without losing excess energy.
In the United States, the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), supported by funding from the Biden administration's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is conducting research and development to advance hydrogen storage system technology hydrogen. To date, progress has been slow due to a wide range of challenges facing technological development, but now a California tech start-up appears to have the solution.
H2MOF is designing a tank that holds energy-rich fuel in a solid state, absorbing it into specially designed nanomaterials. The approach is based on the research of two of its co-founders and scientific advisors: Omar Yaghi, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart, winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Materials with a metal-organic structure
The company hopes to be the first to commercialize atomically engineered metal-organic framework materials, or MOFs, for hydrogen storage, but it is not alone in pursuing this technology. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently published research on an aluminum-based MOF they created to hold hydrogen, Science reported. It was precisely this material that suggested the name to the companies
H2MOF is testing prototypes made of crystal-like materials, designed to attract and hold hydrogen atoms like a sponge absorbing water. And unlike the carbon fiber-lined tanks used in Toyota's Mirai fuel cell sedan, which hold hydrogen at a pressure of 700 kg/cm2 H2MOF intends to press its tank to less than a tenth of the previous one, not therefore requiring tanks of particular thickness, resistance or cost.
This type of storage can make hydrogen an energy source available almost as easily as fossil fuels, at least like the compressed methane normally used in cars. It would be a truly epochal innovation.
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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/immagazzinare-lidrogeno-con-semplicita-una-soluzione-proviene-dalla-california/ on Wed, 28 Feb 2024 20:44:14 +0000.