Mg-based composites as effective materials for storage and generation of hydrogen for FC applications

Abstract

Today, hydrogen is considered as an ideal choice for storing and carrying energy produced by renewable power sources since it is renewable, eco-friendly and has a high energy density. However, due to the low hydrogen storage capacity, high cost and safety issues of the conventional storage methods, several challenges need to be resolved to effectively use hydrogen in mobile applications. Solid-state hydrogen storage in atomic form in hydrides is a promising method of storage for this purpose, particularly because a double amount of hydrogen can be produced via hydrolysis reaction of chemically active hydrides. Among the metal hydrides, magnesium hydride (MgH2) is considered to be one of the most attractive candidates. However, the hydrolysis reaction is rapidly hindered by the passivation layer formed on the surface of MgH2. In order to improve MgH2 hydrolysis efficiency various approaches have been applied. This paper reviews recent progress on the modifications of MgH2-based materials by adding different type of additives, including metals, oxides, hydroxides, halides and surfactants. The introduced additives possess different catalytic properties due to their intrinsic physical and chemical characteristics, and therefore can strongly influence the hydrolysis reaction of MgH2. The most promising results were obtained for various salt additives showing that the reaction rate depends mostly on the additive type rather than on concentration. The effect of preparation technique on the hydrolysis of MgH2 – MgCl2 composites was studied in detail. The obtained results indicate that efficient hydrolysis performance can be achieved by ball milling of the freshly synthesized MgH2 with 5 wt.% MgCl2 and 1 wt.% TiC–2TiB2 additives. The combination of the applied approaches exhibited a notable synergistic effect on the hydrogen generation.