Fuelcell Prototype Locomotive

Green hydrogen production plants: A techno-economic review

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

Fuels – Hydrogen Storage | Compressed

In this article, we propose a novel hydrogen storage system which has both lightness and compactness a combination of a lightweight high pressure vessel and hydrogen storage alloy. The system is expected as a promising formation to improve the properties of hydrogen storage techniques in weight and volume other than the conventional techniques using compressed hydrogen or hydrogen storage alloy individually. The novel system requires a hydrogen storage alloy with higher volumetric hydrogen density as well as higher gravimetric density, and with higher equilibrium dissociation pressure than the hydrogen storage alloys which have ever been used for hydrogen storage systems.

A technical and design evaluation was carried out to meet DOE hydrogen fuel targets for 2010. These targets consisted of a system gravimetric capacity of 2.0 kWh/kg, a system volumetric capacity of 1.5 kWh/L and a system cost of $4/kWh. In compressed hydrogen storage systems, the vast majority of the weight and volume is associated with the hydrogen storage tank. In order to meet gravimetric targets for compressed hydrogen tanks, 10,000 psi carbon resin composites were used to provide the high strength required as well as low weight. For the 10,000 psi tanks, carbon fiber is the largest portion of their cost. Quantum Technologies is a tier one hydrogen system supplier for automotive companies around the world. Over the course of the program Quantum focused on development of technology to allow the compressed hydrogen storage tank to meet DOE goals. At the start of the program in 2004 Quantum was supplying systems with a specific energy of 1.1-1.6 kWh/kg, a volumetric capacity of 1.3 kWh/L and a cost of $73/kWh. Based on the inequities between DOE targets and Quantum’s then current capabilities, focus was placed first on cost reduction and second on weight reduction. Both of these were to be accomplished without reduction of the fuel system’s performance or reliability. Three distinct areas were investigated; optimization of composite structures, development of “smart tanks” that could monitor health of tank thus allowing for lower design safety factor, and the development of “Cool Fuel” technology to allow higher density gas to be stored, thus allowing smaller/lower pressure tanks that would hold the required fuel supply. The second phase of the project deals with three additional distinct tasks focusing on composite structure optimization, liner optimization, and metal.

Shifting the mobility paradigm from fossil fuel to electric propulsion system poses several challenges to a large extent attributed to the low energy density of storage systems. However, technology improvements and an accurate combination of new propulsion systems can facilitate the electrification of the mobility sector. For the first time, a hybridization algorithm is developed to evaluate the optimal configuration of future Energy Storage System (ESS) to facilitate the design of systems such as aircrafts or ships. The algorithm is based on operational behaviors and high-level performances to determine the optimal solution through a standard random search of the input variables. To feed the algorithm, forecasts including estimated performances are carried out on new energy storage technologies such as Fuel Cells (FCs), batteries, and hydrogen storage. The hybridization algorithm is then applied to the design of a 50 passengers' regional electric aircraft in 2040. The results suggest that the best ESS includes a Solid-State Battery (SSB) of 457 kWh, a 1788 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{kW}$</tex> Solid-Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) plant and consumes 190.9 kg of hydrogen. This configuration appears to be the optimal trade-off to minimize weight, volume, and costs.

Future energy systems will be determined by the increasing relevance of solar and wind energy. Crude oil and gas prices are expected to increase in the long run, and penalties for CO2 emissions will become a relevant economic factor. Solar- and wind-powered electricity will become significantly cheaper, such that hydrogen produced from electrolysis will be competitively priced against hydrogen manufactured from natural gas. However, to handle the unsteadiness of system input from fluctuating energy sources, energy storage technologies that cover the full scale of power (in megawatts) and energy storage amounts (in megawatt hours) are required. Hydrogen, in particular, is a promising secondary energy vector for storing, transporting, and distributing large and very large amounts of energy at the gigawatt-hour and terawatt-hour scales. However, we also discuss energy storage at the 120-200-kWh scale, for example, for onboard hydrogen storage in fuel cell vehicles using compressed hydrogen storage. This article focuses on the characteristics and development potential of hydrogen storage technologies in light of such a changing energy system and its related challenges. Technological factors that influence the dynamics, flexibility, and operating costs of unsteady operation are therefore highlighted in particular. Moreover, the potential for using renewable hydrogen in the mobility sector, industrial production, and the heat market is discussed, as this potential may determine to a significant extent the future economic value of hydrogen storage technology as it applies to other industries. This evaluation elucidates known and well-established options for hydrogen storage and may guide the development and direction of newer, less developed technologies.

Thermodynamic Analysis on Hydrogen Storage System

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.

This report describes work completed during the period January 1, 1976 to December 31, 1976, on an ERDA-sponsored program aimed at improvement in the cost and efficiency of electrolytic hydrogen production and development of the technique of using metal hydrides for hydrogen storage for stationary and transportation applications. The work on electrolytic hydrogen production includes work on advanced barrier materials for alkaline cells, studies of nickel alloy based and oxide catalysts for oxygen evolution. Related work on the program involving the H/sub 2/--Cl/sub 2/ electrochemical cell for energy storage is described. Work on hydrogen storage subsystems involving storage reservoir designs for the Hydrogen Technology Advanced-Component Test System (HYTACTS), engineering and metal hydride material test beds and tests of candidate container materials is presented. Progress on the development of new metal hydride materials and tailoring and testing of new alloy systems is summarized. This work emphasizes improvement in the initial activation step, high-cycle test of selected materials and the physical characteristics of cycled materials. The efforts on natural gas supplementation, hydrogen storage systems analysis and the project management of the ERDA Hydrogen Program by BNL are summarized.

The hydrogen storage in metal hydrides is an imminent, innovative, and environmentally beneficial approach that offers benefits for example, an ample amount of storage and elasticity in terms of thermodynamics necessary for hydrogen absorption and release. By successfully integrating temperature management with hydrogen storage procedures, thermal energy storage (TES) systems offer a way to improve the energy efficiency and economic viability of metal hydride‐based storage. This review presents an overview of metal hydride materials utilized for storing hydrogen, emphasizing their thermodynamic and kinetic characteristics. This study examines TES materials, focusing on sensible, latent, and thermochemical energy storage options, particularly those functioning at temperatures suitable for extensively researched hydride systems. An analysis of lanthanum and magnesium‐based metal hydride is presented. Additionally, the study presents a comprehensive review that yields additional combinations of magnesium‐based and lanthanum‐based metal hydrides, elucidating their properties, which encompass the ranges of absorption and desorption temperatures, as well as gravimetric storage capacity. The study concludes that the kinetics of both absorption and desorption are enhanced; in the case of magnesium‐based metal hydrides at elevated temperatures (MgH 2 –7 wt% Fe−7 wt% HCS and MgH 2 @Ni‐MOF) exhibit the highest absorption and desorption temperatures. This study provides a greater understanding to researchers in developing efficient materials for hydrogen storage and can identify patterns in various alloys, including the influence of alloy composition on thermodynamic properties and can screen alloys with desirable properties for various applications.

Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) failure is one of the key criteria in deciding the durability of the PEM fuel cell system. Physical properties such as ionic conductivity and mechanical properties depend on the microstructure. The microstructure is itself strongly dependent on the water content of the membrane (1, 2). It is therefore important to fully understand the effect of degradation stressors on the morphological changes and water-uptake characteristics in order to improve membrane durability.In this work, standard perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomer membranes are subjected to a combined chemical and mechanical accelerated stress test (AST) used for rapid benchmarking of in-situ membrane stability. The degradation stressors in the combined chemical/mechanical AST was previously shown by our group to change the molecular structure and lead to membrane material loss (3). The chemical phase of the AST generates hydroxyl radicals that attack both the side chain and main chain of the polymer, while the mechanically generated stresses due to humidity cycling accelerate mechanical failures. The observed structural changes are anticipated to alter the water-uptake properties of the membrane, as shown previously for ex-situ testing (4). The degradation also alters the morphology, ion exchange capacity, mechanical properties, and proton conductivity of the membrane (5). Water-uptake measurements of partially AST degraded catalyst coated membrane (CCM) samples are carried out at room temperature using a dynamic vapor sorption system. In spite of severe fluoride release and membrane thinning, the water-uptake per unit mass of the AST degraded CCMs is found to be relatively constant. Since the test specimens are CCMs which contain a significant amount of catalyst layer material, an attempt is made to measure and separate the mass of the ionomer by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The ionomer material loss throughout the AST process is significant due to fluoride release and ionomer degradation, up to roughly 50% at end-of-life (3). The water-uptake per unit mass of ionomer in the CCM is determined by extracting the ionomer weight obtained by heating the CCM in the TGA chamber. In contrast to the previous results normalized by specimen dry weight, the water-uptake increases significantly per unit mass of the ionomer in the CCM, as shown in Fig. 1. Although the increased water-uptake may indicate enlarged solvated hydrophilic domains in the membrane, which is good for enhanced proton mobility, the proton conductivity is found to decrease (Fig. 1). This may be attributed to a decay in proton concentration due to sulfonic acid functional group loss during side chain degradation. The overall effects of the combined chemical/mechanical AST on the membrane morphology and properties are presented and compared to provide additional insight into the complex degradation mechanism.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSResearch funding provided by Automotive Partnership Canada (APC), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Ballard Power Systems (BPS) is gratefully acknowledged. BPS is also acknowledged for providing access to experimental facilities, material samples and technical support. REFERENCES1. J.Benziger, A. Bocarsly, M. J. Cheah, P. Majsztrik, B. Satterfield, and Q. Zhao, in Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Storage 141, Bocarly and Mingos, Editors, p. 85 Springer, Berlin Heidelberg 141 (2011).2. Y. Yang, A. Siu, T. J. Peckham, S. Holdcroft, in Advances in Polymer Sciences 215: Fuel cells 1, G. G. Scherer, Editor p. 55 Springer, Berlin Heidelberg 215 (2008).3. C. Lim, L. Ghassemzadeh, F. Van Hove, M. Lauritzen, J. Kolodziej, G.G. Wang, S. Holdcroft, E. Kjeang, J. Power Sources 257 102 (2014).4. L. Ghassemzadeh and S. Holdcroft, J.Am.Chem.Soc. 135 8181 (2013).5. S. V. Venkatesan and E. Kjeang, 11th International Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology Conference, ASME, Minneapolis, MN (2013).

Performance of electric forklift with low-temperature polymer exchange membrane fuel cell power module and metal hydride hydrogen storage extension tank

Safety in hydrogen storage is a key factor for its potential use in modern energy systems. Hydrogen is often referred to as the fuel of the future and therefore poses significant safety challenges due to its high flammability, low molecular density, and ability to easily penetrate various materials. Traditional methods of storing hydrogen include high-pressure storage under high pressures of 35–70 MPa in pressurized vessels and the storage of liquid hydrogen at temperatures as low as −253°C. Metal hydride hydrogen storage tanks are a safe alternative to these traditional storage systems. Hydrogen is a chemically bonded system to metal alloys at pressures under 10 bar(a) and room temperature, eliminating safety risks. During the absorption and desorption of hydrogen, endothermic and exothermic reactions occur, necessitating efficient thermal management. To ensure effective thermal management of the storage tank, various approaches can be applied. One highly innovative solution involves the use of a closed-loop heat pipe (LHP). This system requires no pumping work during operation; thus, it has low energy requirements for operation. The article presents the design of a thermal management system for heating and cooling a metal hydride hydrogen storage tank, along with the development of a physical model of the tank using loop heat pipes. It also discusses the experimental results obtained from measurements on the physical model. Results demonstrate that a well-designed thermal management system ensures optimal operation of the metal hydride storage tank.

Technological maturity serves as a critical indicator for evaluating the current state of technology development and forecasting future trends. It has been widely applied in high‐tech fields, defense, and strategic emerging industries. This paper develops a multidimensional technology maturity assessment framework based on a comprehensive evaluation of existing maturity assessment methods and relevant application studies. The proposed model correlates computed values with the nine levels of technology readiness levels (TRLs) and the four stages of Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), providing a quantitative supplement to these classifications. Utilizing this evaluation model, the maturity levels of five underground compressed air and hydrogen storage power generation (UCHPG) technologies were assessed. The results, as of 2023, reveal that compressed air energy storage (CAES) has attained the highest TRL of 9. Conversely, hydrogen energy storage and fuel cell (HES‐FC) systems achieved a TRL of 7, hydrogen‐heated CAES (HH‐CAES) and hydrogen energy storage and gas turbine (HES‐GT) systems both reached a TRL of 6, while advanced adiabatic CAES (AA‐CAES) obtained a lower TRL of 5. To validate the proposed assessment model, a comparative analysis was conducted with recent literature on the TRL classifications of these five technologies. The findings indicate that the multicriteria technology maturity evaluation model proposed in this paper is reliable, addressing the limitations of single‐criterion assessment methods and providing a more comprehensive evaluation of technology maturity.