The new hydrogen storage vessels will allow fast hydrogen adsorption and desorption as well as high rate supply capability, while also promising very high safety and suitability to ISO16111 (“…requirements applicable to the material, design, construction, and testing of transportable hydrogen gas storage systems, referred to as (MH assemblies)…”). Our unique Porous Metal Hydride (PMH) compacts will be based on advanced hydrogen forming alloys (HFAs), designing and manufacturing of working prototypes of the hydrogen vessels, development of competitive hydrogen storage technologies for subsequent commercialization, including the electronics and software required for optimizing for speed and energy efficiency. The main objective of the proposal is to commercialise the system for hydrogen storage in compacts made from porous metal hydrides (PMH), the demonstration of reversible hydrogen storage in such system, and subsequent industrial scale-up.

To achieve this goal we will select the appropriate hydride-forming alloys (HFAs), refine them using ball milling technique or other state of the art technologies, to mix the refined powders with the powders of metallic matrix with high thermal conductivity, to compact the mixtures using the high pressures both at ambient conditions and under high hydrogen pressure and elevated temperature (above critical point C), to measure and evaluate the hydrogen storage capacity and kinetics of obtained PMHs. The developed PMHs will be integrated in the dedicated hydrogen storage system for feasibility demonstration of reversible hydrogen absorption/desorption. The optimization of parameters of PMHs and integrated systems for various applications will be performed and the infrastructure for small-scale industrial manufacturing of hydrogen vessels will be built. The high values of formation/decomposition enthalpies of metal hydrides and low thermal conductivity of loose powders considerably slow down the hydrogen absorption/desorption from metal hydrides, since in most cases the heat supply during desorption and heat removal during absorption are the limiting stages of hydrogenation. In particular, the times of full charging of the hydrogen storage vessel in mobile storage applications grow to commercially unacceptable values.