A high-performance ternary ferrite-spinel material for hydrogen storage via chemical looping redox cycles

Abstract

Chemical looping has been proposed as an emerging technology for large-scale hydrogen storage with the advantages of high volumetric hydrogen storage density, environmental compatibility, and safety. However, to ensure sufficient redox activity, conventional oxygen carrier materials must be operated at a temperature higher than 800 °C, leading to the rapid deterioration on the storage capacity over several cycles. In this work, we report a ternary ferrite-spinel material Cu0.5Co0.5Fe2O4 for chemical looping hydrogen storage and production. The material exhibits high volumetric hydrogen storage density (65.58 g·L−1) and average hydrogen production rate (142 μmol·g−1·min−1) at 550 °C. The performance is maintained with negligible deactivation over repetitive redox cycles. The high performance can be attributed to the ability of Cu and Co to improve the reduction and the reversible phase change during the oxidation stage at moderate temperatures. The performance of the Cu0.5Co0.5Fe2O4 is comparable to the state-of-the-art Rh-FeOx containing rare earth metals, which enables its potential in industry application.