Hydrogen storage is a key technology for realizing the hydrogen economy and has been one of the highest technical priorities of the DOE Office of Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies. A group of Mg-based hydrides stand as promising candidate for competitive hydrogen storage with reversible hydrogen capacity up to 7.6 wt% for on-board applications. Efforts have been devoted to these materials to decrease their desorption temperature, enhance the kinetics and cycle life. In this paper, we will review our recent theoretical calculations and experimental results on thermodynamics and kinetics of Mg-based hydrogen storage materials, i.e. (i) thermodynamic modeling and experimental investigation of the La-Mg-Ni, La-Ni-Cu, Ce-Mg-Ni, Al-Mg-Li, Mg-Ni-La-Cu and Al-Zn-Si-Mg systems, (ii) synthesizing nanostructured Mg-based hydrogen storage alloys by melting, ball milling, sintering and hydrogen combustion synthesis under the different conditions which are with or without an external physical field including magnetic field and microwave field, and (iii) introducing a series of new models for various kinds of rate-controlling steps including physisorption, chemisorption, surface penetration, diffusion of hydrogen atoms in hydride and chemical reaction and investigating the kinetic mechanism of hydriding/dehydriding reaction for exploring the new hydrogen storage materials. With a future perspective, solid-state hydrogen storage materials are more likely to meet the requirements for onboard storage: appropriate thermodynamics, fast kinetics, high storage capacity, effective heat transfer, light weight, long cycle life, and safety. Therefore, further research work is needed to achieve the goal by improving development on changes both the kinetics and the thermodynamics of hydrogen storage.

Thermodynamics and kinetics of Mg-based hydrogen storage materials

244th National Meeting (2012)

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