Efficient Storage of Hydrogen and Technologies

Abstract

Energy is the very basic requirement for the sustainability of the human race and its development. Immediate attention is required to pace up the evolution of technologies to utilize renewable energy sources such as sunlight, wind, tides, hydrogen, and waste heat management. Hydrogen is used in fuel cells to generate electricity thus it has great potential to solve major problems: clean energy requirements and global warming. Hydrogen is an abundant and efficient source of clean energy as Earth has a lot of hydrogen in the form of water and hydrocarbons and it exhibits complete combustion yielding only water. But a high risk is involved in hydrogen-based technology due to the lightest known element and highly inflammable nature of hydrogen. Materials need to be developed for appropriate hydrogen production, storage, and detection to make economic, efficient, and safe hydrogen technologies to compete with fossil fuels and for introducing a hydrogen-based economy. This chapter includes the basic and detailed information of various hydrogen storage methods and their mechanism like; compressed storage, hydrogen liquefaction and solid state. In this chapter, current developments in hydrogen storage materials and technologies are also discussed. Merits and demerits of different materials and potential solutions given in the literature for various challenges in these hydrogen storage technologies are summarized.