Safe H2 Storage II - Sicheres, druckloses, flüssiges Speichersystem für Wasserstoff bei Raumtemperatur

The project safe hydrogen storage II is based on the results of the project safe hydrogen storage (2nd call A3 program). It is the aim to develop an enhanced hydrogen storage system with considerable increased storage capacity. The results of the first project already showed the positive technical and economical feasibility for this innovative, liquid, non-pressurised, non-cryogen and very safe hydrogen storage system, based on ionic liquids. The developed storage density of 2,0 mass% is not sufficient and therefore should be increased significantly. To achieve that, different approaches shall be verified and combined with each other: First the molecular mass of the basic ionic liquid shall be decreased to expand the free space for the hydrogen itself. This can be achieved solely by structural variation of the quaternary ammonium or imidazolium cation, since the anion BH4 - cannot be optimized any more. A decrease of the cations mass will be done by shortening of the alkyl side chains, which causes doubtlessly an increase of melting point and viscosity due to higher symmetry. To overcome that, cations shall be investigated, which carry shorter and additionally branched or unsaturated or ether-functionalized alkyl side chains. This is known to show the desired effect in analogous structures. It shall be investigated as well, if mixtures of such isomers or derivates will result in even lower melting points and viscosities, as generally known from mixtures of substances compared to pure substances, e.g. eutectic mixtures. An important part of the formulation of the hydrogen storage is the adjustment of the viscosity and the melting point using an additive. This additive usually consists out of a high boiling, molecular compound. It shall now be a goal, to reduce the needed amount of such additives used so far: Increasing the solvation strength by adding polar groups on the one hand and decreasing the viscosity by chemical variation (branched side chains, ether-groups, mixtures) on the other hand shall reduce the amount significantly. To reach these aims proionic GmbH will first start an extensive inquiry regarding industrial available starting materials like tertiary amines or alkylimidazoles and order samples of this materials. Since it is obvious not to find many of adequate commercially available starting materials, the partner TU-Graz, Inst. of org. Chemistry, will synthesise and characterise most of these materials, which by then will be converted into the hydrogen storage by the partner proionic GmbH, using their patented CBILS-route. Proionic will characterise the storage similar to the first project Safe hydrogen storage, except the thermal stability. This will be done by the partner Montanuni Leoben, Inst. of process engineering and environmental protection (VTIU) by the approved method used so far, using thermogravimetry, differential scanning calorimetry, infrared spectroscopy and mass spectroscopy. The one to two best-evaluated storage media will then be investigated regarding recyclability, kinetic of hydrogen release and quality of hydrogen and estimated regarding HSE (Health, Security and Envirnonment) data. At least OMV will verify the economic efficiency compared to the results from the first project Safe Hydrogen Storage. In summary the expected results of this project will be a significant increase of the hydrogen storage capacity and the corresponding technical and economical data of the new system. The project will focus at any time on feasible industrial production conditions for a future production in large scale. This hydrogen storage with a competitive storage capacity will show a number of benefits compared to the state of the art: It is non pressurized, therefore it works at ambient conditions. It is non cryogen and doesnt need to be cooled at all. It stores the hydrogen chemically and releases just the amount of hydrogen needed for an application at its operating conditions via the catalysis-cell: For that reason there is only as little as possible free and dangerous hydrogen present, which maximizes safety. It is liquid and can be pumped similar to conventional fuels. Compared to high pressure or cryo-systems, the tank material is very simple, cheap and of low weight: This increases the system storage density and causes a simple and cheap transport and supply chain, comparable to the ones used for conventional fuels. Last but not least, there is no loss by boil off like in cryo-systems and there is less energy consumption, because no liquefaction at very low temperatures or compression to very high pressure is needed.