Thermodynamics of Metal Hydrides: Tailoring Reaction Enthalpies of Hydrogen Storage Materials

Considering the increasing pollution and exploitation of fossil energy resources, the implementation of new energy concepts is essential for our future industrialized society. Renewable sources have to replace current energy technologies. This shift, however, will not be an easy task. In contrast to current nuclear or fossil power plants renewable energy sources in general do not offer a constant energy supply, resulting in a growing demand of energy storage. Furthermore, fossil fuels are both, energy source as well as energy carrier. This is of special importance for all mobile applications. Alternative energy carriers have to be found. The hydrogen technology is considered to play a crucial role in this respect. In fact it is the ideal means of energy storage for transportation and conversion of energy in a comprehensive clean-energy concept. Hydrogen can be produced from different feedstocks, ideally from water using regenerative energy sources. Water splitting can be achieved by electrolysis, solar thermo-chemical, photoelectrochemical or photobiological processes. Upon reconversion into energy, by using a fuel cell only water vapour is produced, leading to a closed energy cycle without any harmful emissions. Besides stationary applications, hydrogen is designated for mobile applications, e.g. for the zero-emission vehicle. In comparison to batteries hydrogen storage tanks offer the opportunity of fast recharging within a few minutes only and of higher storage densities by an order of magnitude. Hydrogen can be produced from renewable energies in times when feed-in into the electricity grid is not possible. It can be stored in large caverns underground and be utilized either to produce electricity and be fed into the electricity grid again or directly for mobile applications. However, due to the very low boiling point of hydrogen (20.4 K at 1 atm) and its low density in the gaseous state (90 g/m3) dense hydrogen storage, both for stationary and mobile applications, remains a challenging task. There are three major alternatives for hydrogen storage: compressed gas tanks, liquid hydrogen tanks as well as solid state hydrogen storage such as metal hydride hydrogen tanks. All of these three main techniques have their special advantages and disadvantages and are currently used for different applications. However, so far none of the respective tanks fulfils all the demanded technical requirements in terms of gravimetric storage density, volumetric storage density, safety,