Recent advances in hydrogen storage materials

Abstract

On-board hydrogen storage is a critical issue to realize the so-called hydrogen economy that is potential to solve the challenges of energy and environment. Hydrogen stored in solid state materials is a promising method to be able to achieve the on-board applications due to its advantages of high density and safety issues. However, the challenges of high temperature and slow kinetics of hydrogen release must be addressed. Fundamentally, the temperature of hydrogen release is directly dependent on the enthalpy of the reaction. It is demonstrated that the previous approaches such as ball milling with catalysts can significantly enhance the hydrogen release rate but influence very little the thermodynamics (the enthalpy). In this talk, we report some recent research results on hydrogen storage materials (magnesium, complex hydrides and ammonia borane) confined in porous templates. It is confirmed that the hydrogen desorption temperature can be significantly decreased, which means the thermodynamics of hydrogen release reactions can be altered through nanoconfinement.