Novel High Capacity Hydrogen Storage Materials Based On Tetrahydrogenmethane

Hydrogen is considered to be a promising alternative to fossil fuels. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty in finding a practical storage medium, its use as a fuel, for instance for application in the automotive sector, is currently limited. In order to be considered practical, a hydrogen storage material should satisfy a number of requirements, including a high storage capacity (high hydrogen content by mass and volume), ambient storage temperature and pressure, a fast uptake of hydrogen, and reversible hydrogen release. So far, a material that meets these requirements is does not exist.

In this work, we develop novel hydrogen storage materials that fulfills the above-mentioned requirements. The idea is to store hydrogen in the hydrogen-rich crystalline molecular compound tetrahydrogenmethane (CH4(H2)4), which contains as much as 33.4 wt% molecular hydrogen. Not much is known about how this material stores such a remarkable amount of molecular hydrogen: Even something as basic as its structure has not yet been identified. Motivated by this, we investigate the structure of tetrahydrogenmethane, as well as the interaction of hydrogen with this material, using a combined experimental – molecular simulation approach. We also identify promoters that may be added to this material to decrease the necessary storage pressure. Results will be presented at the conference.