High-Density Hydrogen Storage in Space-Filling Polyhedral Sorbents
- NextGen Battery Technologies, LLC, Arlington, VA (United States)
Increasing volumetric hydrogen storage density is critical to bringing fuel-cell powered vehicles to market. High-pressure, compressed-hydrogen tanks are large, heavy, and expensive and high-pressure compression is costly, energy-intensive, potentially hazardous, and made even more challenging due to the non-idealities of hydrogen gas at elevated pressures. Physical adsorption of hydrogen into the nano-scale pores of high surface area materials provides a potential alternative to high-pressure compressed hydrogen leading to higher-density gas storage at 1/7 the pressure. The challenge: these porous materials tend to be light and powdery – requiring even larger tanks. Hence there is a real need to effectively densify high-performance sorbents without changing their inherent pore structure, surface area, or ability to both store and deliver hydrogen rapidly. NextGen used its patented technology to fabricate and test self-assembling, space-filling polyhedral (SFP) sorbents with surface areas greater than 3500 m2/g and packing fractions exceeding 96% of theoretical providing a 50% improvement over existing technology. The SFP sorbents can be manufactured at high-speed/low-cost and used in conventional gas cylinders due to their small size (<0.5 cm); they have well-controlled porosities for rapid filling of the tank. NextGen demonstrated the hydrogen storage capabilities of this scalable technology on three classes of sorbents: activated carbons, metal organic framework materials, and porous polymers, showing that it truly is a “materials-agnostic” solution. NextGen will advance the state-of-the-art and take hydrogen fuel cell applications of SFP to the point of commercial insertion. NextGen will focus on materials, density, shape, process, and tank-fill optimization and technology automation and scale-up, utilizing independent third-party testing of complete systems to provide a direct comparison to today’s state-of-the-art technology. Tests include hydrogen storage capacity, fill/discharge times, and system cyclability. NextGen will collaborate with end-users, sorbent producers, and hydrogen suppliers to develop a technology strategy that addresses stakeholder metrics and encourages technology adoption. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have 40% of the well-to-wheels greenhouse gas emissions of battery powered electric vehicles and a hydrogen storage system that is 30 – 70% the weight/size of that of a lithium-ion battery for comparable range providing increased passenger/storage space. Like conventional automobiles, fuel cells can be fully refueled in three to five minutes. The use of space-filling polyhedral sorbents for hydrogen storage will lead to smaller, lower cost fuel tanks, lower gas compression costs, and increased vehicle and passenger safety – accelerating the growth of fuel-cell powered vehicles around the globe.
- Research Organization:
- NextGen Battery Technologies, LLC, Arlington, VA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- Contributing Organization:
- NEI Corporation
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0018543
- OSTI ID:
- 1497401
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase I)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-NextGen-18543
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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