Materials for hydrogen storage

In collaboration with Dr. I. Rossetti, University of Milan; Dr A. Tuissi, IENI-CNR Lecco (IT), Framework Agreement Lombardy Region – CNR, Project "Technology and materials for the efficient exploitation of solar energy", 2013-2015.

Concerning the use of the hydrogen as an energy carrier, starting from the whole awareness of the potentiality of metal hydrides as a storage means, a number of alloys has been discovered, like i.e. LaNi5 (MmNi5), MgNi2, TiFe and intermetallic based on Ti and Zr, of extremely interesting properties for mass applications. However, none of these systems is optimized at present and the research is evolving worldwide to develop novel metallic hydrides which can cope with the requirements imposed by the diverse operating conditions. The strategy relies on optimizing the composition of the materials, to improve their properties in terms of adsorption-desorption of hydrogen, in terms of high intrinsic reversible capacity, in terms of fast kinetics and pressure plateau favorable to optimal temperature required by applications; this should pave the way to the development of storage/release systems based on metal hydrides, characterized by maximum carried H2 quantity and energy efficiency guaranteed in time.