Novel Nanomaterials for Hydrogen Storage via Hydrogen Spillover and Hydrogen Trapping

Angela Lueking (Penn State University)

Development of a hydrogen economy will require significant advances in methods by which to produce, store, transport, and distribute H2 in an economically viable manner. Perhaps the greatest hurdle is in the development of a viable hydrogen storage system, as no clear vision has emerged to meet the Department of Energy.s challenging hydrogen storage goals which were developed to enable a 300-mile vehicle range with performance competitive to today.s internal combustion engine. Traditional metal hydrides require high dissociation temperatures to release hydrogen at an appreciable rate. Many novel nanomaterials (boron-doped carbons, metal organic frameworks, etc.) require cryogenic conditions to store appreciable amounts of hydrogen. In both cases, the auxiliary components necessary to maintain the extreme operating temperatures come at a high system weight penalty, and thereby reduce efficiency gains of using the fuel cell in energy conversion. In this talk, I explore two strategies for moderate temperature (i.e. 300K) hydrogen adsorption. The first, hydrogen spillover, incorporates a supported catalyst to initiate hydrogen dissociation and diffusion to a high-surface area support. Currently, we are using metal-organic frameworks and carbide-derived-carbons for the latter, and exploring the roles of surface chemistry and porosity on overall hydrogen uptake. The second strategy is to synthesize hydrogen in parallel with carbon restructuring via a reactive ball milling process. The resulting carbon-hydrogen structure shows unique interactions and low-temperature hydrogen evolution from the .meta-stable. structure.

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