Metal hydride hydrogen compressors: A review

AbstractMetal hydride (MH) thermal sorption compression is an efficient and reliable method allowing a conversion of energy from heat into a compressed hydrogen gas. The most important component of such a thermal engine – the metal hydride material itself – should possess several material features in order to achieve an efficient performance in the hydrogen compression. Apart from the hydrogen storage characteristics important for every solid H storage material (e.g. gravimetric and volumetric efficiency of H storage, hydrogen sorption kinetics and effective thermal conductivity), the thermodynamics of the metal–hydrogen systems is of primary importance resulting in a temperature dependence of the absorption/desorption pressures). Several specific features should be optimised to govern the performance of the MH-compressors including synchronisation of the pressure plateaus for multi-stage compressors, reduction of slope of the isotherms and hysteresis, increase of cycling stability and life time, together with challenges in system design associated with volume expansion of the metal matrix during the hydrogenation.The present review summarises numerous papers and patent literature dealing with MH hydrogen compression technology. The review considers (a) fundamental aspects of materials development with a focus on structure and phase equilibria in the metal–hydrogen systems suitable for the hydrogen compression; and (b) applied aspects, including their consideration from the applied thermodynamic viewpoint, system design features and performances of the metal hydride compressors and major applications

Effect of nanoparticle (Pd, Pd/Pt, Ni) deposition on high temperature hydrogenation of Ti-V alloys in gaseous flow containing CO

The hydrogenation properties of Ti-V hydrides coated with nanoparticles have been studied in gaseous mixtures of argon and hydrogen with and without additions of 1% CO. Nanoparticles of Pd, Ni, and co-deposited Pd/Pt with particle sizes of ~30-60 nm were formed by electroless deposition on the hydride surfaces. The alloy resistance to CO could be significantly improved by particle deposition. Large amounts of hydrogen were absorbed in a CO-containing gas when Ni and Pd/Pt deposition had been applied, while pure Pd deposition had no positive effect. Ni was found to have a stronger effect than those of Pd/Pt and Pd, possibly because of the size effect of Ni nanoparticles.IS

Modelling of metal hydride hydrogen compressors from thermodynamics of hydrogen – Metal interactions viewpoint: Part I. Assessment of the performance of metal hydride materials

This work presents a model to determine productivity and heat consumption of hydrogen compression utilising metal hydrides (MH) by using Pressure – Composition – Temperature (PCT) diagrams of the MH materials at defined operating conditions – temperatures and hydrogen pressures. The present Part I is focused on the analysis of hydrogen compression performances of several AB5- and AB2-type intermetallic alloys which, when operating between temperatures of 20 and 150 °C, provide H2 compression up to 500 atm, with a cycle productivity about 100 NL H2/kg MH and compression ratio of up to 10, at H2 suction pressure below 10–15 atm, or up to 5 at higher suction pressures. We show that calculated cycle productivities of hydrogen compression are related to the operating conditions and significantly vary for the different MH materials, even though showing similar trends in their changes

Magnesium–carbon hydrogen storage hybrid materials produced by reactive ball milling in hydrogen

Time-resolved studies uncovered kinetics and mechanism of Mg–hydrogen interactions during High energy reactive ball milling in hydrogen (HRBM) in presence of various types of carbon, including graphite (G), activated carbon (AC), multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), expandable (EG) and thermally-expanded (TEG) graphite. Introduction of carbon significantly changes the hydrogenation behaviour, which becomes strongly dependent on the nature and amount of carbon additive. For the materials containing 1 wt.% AC or TEG, and 5 wt.% MWCNT, the hydrogenation becomes superior to that for the individual magnesium and finishes within 1 h. Analysis of the data indicates that carbon acts as a carrier of the ‘‘activated’’ hydrogen by a mechanism of spill-over. For Mg–G the hydrogenation starts from an incubation period and proceeds slower. An increase in the content of EG and TEG above 1 wt.% results in the deterioration of the hydrogenation kinetics. The effect of carbon additives has roots in their destruction during the HRBM to form graphene layers encapsulating the MgH2 nanoparticles and preventing the grain growth. This results in an increase of absorption–desorption cycle stability and a decrease of the MgH2 crystallite size in the re-hydrogenated Mg–C hybrid materials (40–125 nm) as compared to Mg alone (180 nm).Web of Scienc

Electronic structure, phase stability and chemical bonding in Th2_2Al and Th2_2AlH4_4

We present the results of theoretical investigation on the electronic structure, bonding nature and ground state properties of Th$_2$Al and Th$_2$AlH$_4$ using generalized-gradient-corrected first-principles full-potential density-functional calculations. Th$_2$AlH$_4$ has been reported to violate the "2 \AA rule" of H-H separation in hydrides. From our total energy as well as force-minimization calculations, we found a shortest H-H separation of 1.95 {\AA} in accordance with recent high resolution powder neutron diffraction experiments. When the Th$_2$Al matrix is hydrogenated, the volume expansion is highly anisotropic, which is quite opposite to other hydrides having the same crystal structure. The bonding nature of these materials are analyzed from the density of states, crystal-orbital Hamiltonian population and valence-charge-density analyses. Our calculation predicts different nature of bonding for the H atoms along $a$ and $c$. The strongest bonding in Th$_2$AlH$_4$ is between Th and H along $c$ which form dumb-bell shaped H-Th-H subunits. Due to this strong covalent interaction there is very small amount of electrons present between H atoms along $c$ which makes repulsive interaction between the H atoms smaller and this is the precise reason why the 2 {\AA} rule is violated. The large difference in the interatomic distances between the interstitial region where one can accommodate H in the $ac$ and $ab$ planes along with the strong covalent interaction between Th and H are the main reasons for highly anisotropic volume expansion on hydrogenation of Th$_2$Al.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure