Posted by Mike on November 14th, 2007 in heat, power generation, power storage

Ever since the term “Hydrogen economy” crept into our vocabulary, the counter argument has been storage: How do you store this energy source in a way that makes engineering and economical sense?

First, we wanted to compress it into super cold – 253C liquid H2 tanks. This provides the fastest access to useable hydrogen, as it changes from liquid to gaseous state with a little preheating. Unfortunately, super cold tanks are expensive and hard to maintain at super cold temperatures.

The next trick was metal hydride storage. Imagine a matrix of metal in a tank that happens to have an affinity for hydrogen. The hydrogen flows into the tank, and about 7% or 8% “disappears” into the matrix of metal. To get it out you just change the “release kinetics”, i.e. you heat it up!

Now, the scientist s at the UVA have found a novel mixture for a hydrogen storage media that pushes this storage limit into the 14% range. This begins to make me believe that we may actually see this hydrogen economy after all. (just don’t think Hindenburg!)

http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.php?id=3273