[nanoPost] Cast magnesium alloys with novel nanostructure to store hydrogen

Company Australia

Hydrogen is used today as a reactive gas for many industrial processes. Increasingly it is being discussed and evaluated as a clean energy carrier to replace hydrocarbons fuels such as gasoline and coal. However, storage of hydrogen is a barrier to its wider adoption as an energy carrier, with available storage technologies suffering from significant performance, cost and safety disadvantages.

The company's technology is based on cast magnesium alloys with novel nano-structure to store hydrogen as a solid metal hydride. The alloys are produced using conventional casting equipment, and are therefore expected to have significant economic benefits over hydrogen storage materials produced by conventional means.

To maximise the hydrogen storage capacity and hydrogen release rate, modifications have been made to the casting technique, but without adding significantly to the cost or complexity of the production process.

Under laboratory conditions, The company's  alloys have been shown to deliver commercially viable hydrogen storage capacities at low cost. The alloys have demonstrated a hydrogen storage capacity of up to 7 wt% while operating at low pressures (15-20 bar) that remains consistent over many absorption/desorption cycles.

Significantly, The company's  material is used in a bulk form and does not need to be processed into a nano-scale powder to deliver its hydrogen sorption properties, unlike many of the newer hydrogen storage materials. This imparts safety, cost and manufacturing scalability advantages over other powdered storage materials.

The company's  alloy has been independently tested and its results validated by a large, European materials company.

The company is currently developing prototype storage systems demonstrating that this storage capacity can be achieved with a significantly larger amount of alloy.

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