Strategic Institute Program - New Advanced Materials for Hydrogen Storage

One major problem to be solved is that of H storage. Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) is one of the most important research institutions in Norway involved into R&D on advanced materials for energy systems.

The main goals of the project are to integrate existing and initiate new activities, both in fundamental studies and applied research, and to strengthen the position of IFE as the leading national institution working in the area of hydrogen storage in solid materials.

This 4-years project financed by The Research Council of Norway started in 2001 and involves a team of two post-doctoral researchers and one PhD student coordinated by the project manager. The overall budget is 8,700,000 NOK.

Principal objectives and sub-goals

Specific goals are:

• arrive at structure-dependent choices of advanced materials for hydrogen storage;
• optimisation of the properties of our recently discovered, super H-dense intermetallic hydrides with unusually short distances between hydrogen atoms;
• building modern laboratory facilities for studies of H in solid storage materials.

Project summary

The relationship between structure, bonding and hydrogen storage capacities in a principally new type of intermetallic hydrides formed by rare earth metals, nickel and indium and which are capable of reaching local H-storage densities eight times higher than liquid H2, will be established. The work will be focused on search for advanced materials with smaller H-H separations compared to presently reached local hydrogen densities to extend this to the bulk behaviour of the materials.

Full structural characterisation of carbon nano-materials and carbon-containing intermetallic compounds will be done and related to their H-storage behaviour to allow proposal of the ideal structural characteristics of the optimum materials for the near-to-room temperature hydrogen storage.

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Figure 1 (a) The crystal structure of LaNiInH1.3 containing short H–H separations of 1.6 Å. (b) Evolution of c-unit cell parameter vs applied static pressures up to 400 kbar. H–H distances are contracted to 1.3–1.4 Å.

High resolution powder X-ray (synchrotron radiation, SNBL, Grenoble) and neutron diffraction studies at IFE's research reactor JEEPII, Studsvik Neutron Research Facility (NFL) and Insttitute Laue-Langevin (ILL) will be extensively used. The laboratory of hydrogen storage in solid materials will be built and includes: Pressure-Composition-Temperature measurement setup, volumetric H-sorption rig, Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy equipment.

Figure 2. The experimental setup for hydrogenation and Thermal Desproption Spectroscopy measurements.