Search for new light-weight hydrogen storage materials using Hydrogenography

Hydrogen storage is essential for the implementation of hydrogen as an energy carrier in a sustainable economy. Hydrogen storage in metal hydrides is especially attractive due to the high volumetric capacity (larger than that of liquid hydrogen) that can be attained. However, the conditions to store and retrieve hydrogen need to be in a practical range of temperatures (<100°C) and pressures (1-10 bar). Finding new materials is very much like the search for a needle in a haystack. For this we use hydrogenography, a powerful technique developed in our group, which probes the properties of thousands of samples simultaneously. This combinatorial approach also allows us to systematically analyze the trends in storage behaviour. We also investigate a number of fundamental aspects such as the role of meta-stable structures and the effect of crystalline order and the existence of an intriguing enthalphy/entropy correlation.

Project leaders

• Dr. B. Dam,  Free University, Amsterdam
• Prof. dr. R.P. Griessen,  Free University, Amsterdam