American scientists have proposed storing hydrogen in metal compounds, rather than in cylinders

One of the most promising areas of green energy is the use of hydrogen as a fuel. However, the produced hydrogen needs to be transported and stored somehow. At the moment, the safest option is to store hydrogen in special cylinders under high pressure.

One alternative was the storage of hydrogen as metal hydrides, but this method had serious problems that made the method unprofitable for industrial use. American scientists decided to remedy this situation, and they succeeded.

The modified method and its prospects

So the option of storing hydrogen in the form of metal compounds is attractive from the point of view of safety, as well as the extreme simplicity when storing gas in the solid phase. In addition, technologies for extracting gas from such a state have long been known and perfectly developed.

But just in order to "sharpen" hydrogen in the metal, it was necessary to create just a huge pressure, and the resulting hybrid form had increased degradation properties.

A scientific group consisting of representatives of two American laboratories at once (Livermore National Laboratory named after Lawrence and Sandia National Laboratory), has found a way to significantly simplify both the injection itself and improve the shelf life.

In their study, the scientists decided to use metallic aluminum and turn it into aluminum hydride. As you know, under normal conditions for pumping hydrogen into aluminum, it is necessary to create a pressure exceeding 6900 atmospheres.

The engineers proposed to use a new nanostructured material skeleton, which has a huge number of nanopores.

So its use made it possible to lower the required pressure to 690 atmospheres (about 700 bar), and already this pressure is easy enough to provide in any industrial plant and commercial hydrogen refueling modules.

In addition, as shown by laboratory measurements, the aluminum hydride obtained in this way has a bulk density of hydrogen twice as high as during its liquid storage.

Of course, the technology is still far from full commercial use, and scientists are still working to improve and at the same time simplify the injection of hydrogen into metal. But already now, broad prospects for the use of technology are opening up.

So, thanks to the use of aluminum hydride, in the near future, we may well be able to see the first solid-state hydrogen batteries, which will be easier to use than modern batteries.

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