2009 DOE Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Report

This report summarizes comments from the Peer Review Panel at the 2011 DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program Annual Merit Review, held on May 9-13, 2011, in Arlington, Virginia. It covers the program areas of hydrogen production and delivery; hydrogen storage; fuel cells; manufacturing R&D; technology validation; safety, codes, and standards; education; market transformation; and systems analysis.

The 2015 Annual Progress Report summarizes fiscal year 2015 activities and accomplishments by projects funded by the DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program. It covers the program areas of hydrogen production; hydrogen delivery; hydrogen storage; fuel cells; manufacturing R&D; technology validation; safety, codes and standards; systems analysis; and market transformation.

This report summarizes the hydrogen and fuel cell R&D activities and accomplishments of the DOE Hydrogen Program for FY2009. It covers the program areas of hydrogen production and delivery; fuel cells; manufacturing; technology validation; safety, codes and standards; education; and systems analysis.

The purpose of this project was to investigate and evaluate the attractiveness of using a magnesium chemical hydride slurry as a hydrogen storage, delivery, and production medium for automobiles. To fully evaluate the potential for magnesium hydride slurry to act as a carrier of hydrogen, potential slurry compositions, potential hydrogen release techniques, and the processes (and their costs) that will be used to recycle the byproducts back to a high hydrogen content slurry were evaluated. A 75% MgH2 slurry was demonstrated, which was just short of the 76% goal. This slurry is pumpable and storable for months at a time at room temperature and pressure conditions and it has the consistency of paint. Two techniques were demonstrated for reacting the slurry with water to release hydrogen. The first technique was a continuous mixing process that was tested for several hours at a time and demonstrated operation without external heat addition. Further work will be required to reduce this design to a reliable, robust system. The second technique was a semi-continuous process. It was demonstrated on a 2 kWh scale. This system operated continuously and reliably for hours at a time, including starts and stops. This process could be readily reduced to practice for commercial applications. The processes and costs associated with recycling the byproducts of the water/slurry reaction were also evaluated. This included recovering and recycling the oils of the slurry, reforming the magnesium hydroxide and magnesium oxide byproduct to magnesium metal, hydriding the magnesium metal with hydrogen to form magnesium hydride, and preparing the slurry. We found that the SOM process, under development by Boston University, offers the lowest cost alternative for producing and recycling the slurry. Using the H2A framework, a total cost of production, delivery, and distribution of $4.50/kg of hydrogen delivered or $4.50/gge was determined. Experiments performed at Boston University have demonstrated the technical viability of the process and have provided data for the cost analyses that have been performed. We also concluded that a carbothermic process could also produce magnesium at acceptable costs. The use of slurry as a medium to carry chemical hydrides has been shown during this project to offer significant advantages for storing, delivering, and distributing hydrogen: • Magnesium hydride slurry is stable for months and pumpable. • The oils of the slurry minimize the contact of oxygen and moisture in the air with the metal hydride in the slurry. Thus reactive chemicals, such as lithium hydride, can be handled safely in the air when encased in the oils of the slurry. • Though magnesium hydride offers an additional safety feature of not reacting readily with water at room temperatures, it does react readily with water at temperatures above the boiling point of water. Thus when hydrogen is needed, the slurry and water are heated until the reaction begins, then the reaction energy provides heat for more slurry and water to be heated. • The reaction system can be relatively small and light and the slurry can be stored in conventional liquid fuel tanks. When transported and stored, the conventional liquid fuel infrastructure can be used. • The particular metal hydride of interest in this project, magnesium hydride, forms benign byproducts, magnesium hydroxide (“Milk of Magnesia”) and magnesium oxide. • We have estimated that a magnesium hydride slurry system (including the mixer device and tanks) could meet the DOE 2010 energy density goals. During the investigation of hydriding techniques, we learned that magnesium hydride in a slurry can also be cycled in a rechargeable fashion. Thus, magnesium hydride slurry can act either as a chemical hydride storage medium or as a rechargeable hydride storage system. Hydrogen can be stored and delivered and then stored again thus significantly reducing the cost of storing and delivering hydrogen. Further evaluation and development of this concept will be performed as follow-on work under another project. However, since the cost of reducing magnesium from magnesium oxide makes up 85% of the cost of the slurry, if hydrogen can be stored many times in the slurry, then the cost of storing hydrogen can be spread over many units of hydrogen and can be significantly reduced from the costs of a chemical hydride system. This may be the most important finding of this project. If the slurry is used to carry a rechargeable hydride, the slurry can be stored in a conventional liquid fuel tank and delivered to a release system as hydrogen is needed. The release system will contain only the hydride needed to produce the hydrogen desired. This is in contrast to conventional designs proposed for other rechargeable hydride systems that store all the hydride in a large and heavy pressure and heat transfer vessel.

A comprehensive review on hydrogen production and utilization in North America: Prospects and challenges

6 - Graphene/graphene oxide–based nanomaterials for hydrogen production and storage applications

Hydrogen production has become an emerging technology and offered a pathway to sustainable energy utilization in transportation systems. In this paper, we propose a coordinated planning of the electricity network and hydrogen refueling and production station planning strategy for hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). In the proposed system structure, a hydrogen supply chain for FCEVs mainly composes hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs), hydrogen production stations (HPSs), hydrogen storage, and hydrogen delivery network. To enhance the system's flexibility, hydrogen delivery combines both gas pipeline delivery and truck logistics delivery. In the mathematical models, the synergistic effect and coupling relationship of the electricity network, gas network, and transportation network are presented. To ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the hydrogen refueling system, a quality of service (QoS) and reliability assessment method is presented. The proposed methodology is verified in case studies. It is found out that compared with the single delivery methods, the proposed multi-network coordinated planning has the lowest total cost with less unserved energy. Besides, through QoS and reliability assessment, enough hydrogen reserves can be maintained to cope with contingencies.

Green hydrogen is one of the solutions in the European energy transition strategy towards Net Zero, despite the high production costs and associated risks.Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) can help mitigate energy security issues related to hydrogen production in foreign countries and seasonality of green hydrogen production from renewable wind and solar sources. UHS requires in-depth knowledge of the subsurface and long-term monitoring to minimise the risks associated with hydrogen storage.Here, we present FUSE (Open Infrastructure on Future Underground Hydrogen Storage), a partnership between OGS, the University of Trieste and the University of Udine, and funded by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (NE Italy). The project aims to create an open, integrated and distributed infrastructure designed to link academia and industry for the investigation, characterisation, and de-risking of potential UHS sites and accelerate white hydrogen exploration.Within the project we will integrate geophysical instrumentation with advanced laboratory facilities and multi-scale numerical modelling to characterize reservoir/caprock systems and assess potential hazards related to hydrogen injection, storage and extraction. The infrastructure includes:The acquisition of high-resolution imaging and monitoring equipment including borehole logging systems, seismic and geoelectric arrays, and optical DAS cable for monitoring purposes. This will enable both the characterisation of potential UHS sites and the continuous observation of pressure-induced changes and fluid migration patterns within the reservoir once hydrogen storage begins.The development of multi-platform remote sensing capabilities through the acquisition of airborne and drone-based magnetic and gravity systems to map subsurface heterogeneities and structural discontinuities.The enhancement of experimental petrophysical and fluid-dynamics laboratories to define hydrogen–rock–fluid interactions and processes. These facilities are essential to quantify the petrophysical properties affecting hydrogen containment and recovery and fluid migration within the reservoir/caprock system.The integration of predictive modelling software suites to derisk site selection and quantify fluid-dynamic processes in the subsurface.Furthermore, FUSE aims to provide new tools to support the emerging exploration of natural (white) hydrogen. Overall, FUSE will boost opportunities for research and industry realms in the identification of potential UHS sites and help de-risk future efforts aimed at initiating large scale hydrogen storage.

Alternative long-term storage of energy is becoming increasingly important due to climate change. Hydrogen-based storage technologies have long been considered promising alternatives to batteries. However, the different forms of hydrogen storage have various disadvantages and are still comparatively expensive. As an alternative, this paper deals with a new concept for hydrogen storage, the Cryogenic Flux Capacitor (CFC). It is intended as an intermediate between high-pressure and liquid storage to exploit the advantages and reduce the disadvantages. This paper ranks the CFC technology against the others. For this purpose, it investigates the economic viability and the specific application as a grid-connected system. A complete system from hydrogen production and storage to conversion into electrical energy is considered. In detail, the costs for storage and storage time are compared, and the size scaling of a CFC-based system as a grid-connected system is examined. The Levelized Costs of Energy (LCOE) are calculated and compared as a benchmark. It turns out that a CFC-based storage system also requires a tremendous amount of energy in the form of liquid nitrogen and the associated operational costs for cooling down the hydrogen. Nevertheless, the overall operating costs are between high-pressure and liquid hydrogen storage. Most surprising is the LCOE, which, at 0.192 $/kWh–0.234 $/kWh, is well within the range of the other storage technologies. As a grid-connected storage system, CFC technology can be used as a small- to a medium-scale energy storage system, e.g., to serve smaller neighborhoods.

As a kind of clean energy, hydrogen energy has great potential to reduce environmental pollution and provide efficient energy conversion, and the key to its efficient utilization is to develop safe, economical and portable hydrogen storage technology. At present, hydrogen storage technology lags behind hydrogen production and use, which is the bottleneck restricting the development of hydrogen energy. In this paper, several current solid-state hydrogen storage methods are reviewed, including hydrate hydrogen storage, alloy hydrogen storage and MOF hydrogen storage. At the hydrogen storage density level, the hydrogen storage capacity of 1K-MOF-5 can reach 4.23 wt% at 77 K and 10 MPa, and remains basically unchanged in 20 isothermal adsorption and desorption experiments. At the level of temperature and pressure of hydrogen storage, the alloy can realize hydrogen storage under ambient conditions. At the economic level, the cost of hydrogen storage in hydrates is only USD 5–8 per kilogram, with almost zero carbon emissions. Through the analysis, it can be seen that the above solid-state hydrogen storage technologies have their own advantages. Although hydrate hydrogen storage is lower than alloy materials and MOF materials in hydrogen storage density, it still has huge potential for utilization space because of its low cost and simple preparation methods. This paper further provides a comprehensive review of the existing challenges in hydrate research and outlines prospective directions for the advancement of hydrogen storage technologies.

Systems based on hypo-eutectic Mg–Mg2Ni alloys for medium to large scale hydrogen storage and delivery

Parameter study for dimensioning of a PV optimized hydrogen supply plant

This document summarizes the status of carbon-neutral hydrogen production, storage and transport, and utilization. The state of the art in the implementation, limitations, and challenges of these technologies are summarized. Sources of hydrogen are broadly categorized as hydrcoarbons or water and the processes used to convert these sources to hydrogen as catalytic, thermochemical, or electrochemical. Catalytic steam methane reforming of methane is the dominant process today. Other processes have smaller production volumes and the technology is less mature, but are being deployed at increasing rates, most notably water electrolyzers for hydrogen fueling stations. Efficient transport and storage of hydrogen is one of the major challenges facing a hydrogen-based energy economy. This arises in part from its low volumetric energy density necessitating very high pressures or cryogenic temperatures to store sufficient amounts for practical applications. High-pressure compressed hydrogen cylinders are the incumbent hydrogen storage technology for applications such as light-duty fuel cell electric vehicles, for example. The storage of hydrogen in materials or in chemicals is being pursued to address the issues associated with compression, such as parasitic energy loss and weight, size, and cost of storage containers. The complex nature of the chemical and physical processes involved in the uptake, storage, and release of hydrogen has slowed the discovery of suitable hydrogen storage materials. Both small and large-scale storage face the challenge of embrittlement of the storage media by hydrogen. There is a myriad of uses of hydrogen offering the promises of improving the efficiency of various applications and reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions. These range from direct electrochemical conversion to electricity to power vehicles and grid-level stationary applications to combustion to production of chemicals and commodities. One of the most impactful applications in terms of reduction of CO2 emissions is fuel cell passenger vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles such as class 8 trucks. The challenges facing widespread deployment of fuel cells, beyond the major hurdle of the lack of a hydrogen distribution infrastructure, are cost and durability, primarily related to the precious metal cathode catalyst and its durability. The other uses of hydrogen from conversion to hydrocarbons, polymer upcycling, and upgrading of bio-oils are at varying stages of maturity and also face fundamental challenges associated with catalytic processes and materials.

The Cryogenic Flux Capacitor (CFC) is a cold, dense energy storage core that is being studied in the cryo-compressed, about 300 bar and 80K, region of gaseous hydrogen (GH2) storage and liquid hydrogen (LH2) region near the normal boiling point. The hydrogens storage is improved by physically bonding the molecules within the nanoscale pores of the aerogel composite blanket material. The process of bonding or debonding is governed by principles of physical adsorption (physisorption) and thermodynamics. The large surface area afforded by the nanoporous aerogel (~1,000 m2/g) allows its storage performance to easily exceed capacities of high-pressure GH2 storage for an equivalent volume. With the integrated aerogel, subscale tests have shown that storage is increased by about 49% over a simple tank filled with GH2 at the same operating temperature and pressure. For LH2 conditions, the CFC is shown to operate at equivalent densities. For the techno-economic analysis (TEA), the source of hydrogen is compared between onsite steam methane reforming (SMR) and onsite solar photovoltaic (PV) panels providing power to electrolyzers to produce GH2. The TEA compares pure hydrogen burning in a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) to hydrogen fuel cells with an overall net power output of 650 MW. The SMR system uses natural gas as an input and includes a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system. The levelized cost of electricity is developed based on the capital cost and operating cost of the systems. Sensitivities are discussed around the cost of natural gas, ranging from 1.93 USD per MMBTU to 6.75 USD per MMBTU, and carbon dioxide disposal, ranging from 7 USD per tonne to 10 USD per tonne. For comparison to the conventional CCGT baseline, a baseload scenario is adopted with 85% capacity factor. The results of the study show that onsite hydrogen generation from SMR is about 1 to 3 USD per kg over the life of the plant and the PV hydrogen production produces at 4 to 5 USD per kg. The cost of storage for CFC is compared to other systems, including high-pressure GH2 and atmospheric LH2. The system is shown to provide the lowest costs for all these options at the grid scale, due to its higher capacity than high-pressure GH2 and ability to operate at 80K, receiving refrigeration from liquid nitrogen systems reducing capital and operating costs when compared LH2 storage systems. SMR is competitive with CCGT at the gas prices, both of which have lower LCOE than the PV system. When accounting for variability in gas prices, the PV and electrolyzer system is less sensitive to these changes and provides the lowest LCOE across the whole range.

The depletion of reliable energy sources and the environmental and climatic repercussions of polluting energy sources have become global challenges. Hence, many countries have adopted various renewable energy sources including hydrogen. Hydrogen is a future energy carrier in the global energy system and has the potential to produce zero carbon emissions. For the non-fossil energy sources, hydrogen and electricity are considered the dominant energy carriers for providing end-user services, because they can satisfy most of the consumer requirements. Hence, the development of both hydrogen production and storage is necessary to meet the standards of a “hydrogen economy”. The physical and chemical absorption of hydrogen in solid storage materials is a promising hydrogen storage method because of the high storage and transportation performance. In this paper, physical hydrogen storage materials such as hollow spheres, carbon-based materials, zeolites, and metal–organic frameworks are reviewed. We summarize and discuss the properties, hydrogen storage densities at different temperatures and pressures, and the fabrication and modification methods of these materials. The challenges associated with these physical hydrogen storage materials are also discussed.