The Nov 4 Aviation week magazine had an article on a company called H2MOF (https://h2mof.com/our-technology/) that has pioneered a new way to store hydrogen. Here's the crux of the article -
"MOF are nanoengineered materials in which metal ions are connected by organic ligands to create porous polymers. “It is a crystalline framework that has an incredible amount of surface area,” Bach says. “One gram is going to have an outside surface area of 1 m2 [11 ft.2], but because of the pores inside it, the internal surface area is around 7,000 m2.
“The more surface area, the more parking lots you have for water or carbon dioxide or hydrogen,” he says. “It’s just a very efficient parking lot for molecules. And the molecules are not being absorbed. They are hovering on the surface with weak bonding. That means it doesn’t require a lot of energy to discharge.”
The crystalline material is formed into pellets and loaded into tanks. Hydrogen is stored at relatively low pressure, around 20 bar, reducing tank weight and cost and allowing for noncylindrical shapes. Only a small amount of heat—either from the ambient air or waste heat from a fuel cell—is needed to release the hydrogen.
The tank can be recharged directly from the low-pressure outlet of an electrolyzer, and the hydrogen is durably and efficiently stored in a solid concrete-like form. This approach avoids the safety risks of high-pressure tanks exploding or cryogenic liquid tanks leaking, H2MOF points out."
Basically using a polymer framework they are able to massively increase the density of the hydrogen and store it more like (wet) concrete. It doesn't need much pressurization or heat to remove the hydrogen from the polymer framework.
It's still in the development stage, but they are working on trying to create a drone that utilizes hydrogen stored like this as its fuel - "H2MOF has scaled up production of MOF to the kilogram level and produced prototype tanks, and now it is looking to partner with drone manufacturers to test the tanks beginning early next year, Chief Technology Officer Neel Sirosh says. Drones require 100-200 g of hydrogen, and the tanks are 6 in. in diameter and about 2 ft. long."
Metallic hydrogen is around double liquified hydrogen. This polymermized version takes it to a new level though. Will be interesting to see if they can get it to work. If so it can really help with the cost to distribute and store hydrogen. If it works, and it's applied to the game, it would change a lot of things!
"MOF are nanoengineered materials in which metal ions are connected by organic ligands to create porous polymers. “It is a crystalline framework that has an incredible amount of surface area,” Bach says. “One gram is going to have an outside surface area of 1 m2 [11 ft.2], but because of the pores inside it, the internal surface area is around 7,000 m2.
“The more surface area, the more parking lots you have for water or carbon dioxide or hydrogen,” he says. “It’s just a very efficient parking lot for molecules. And the molecules are not being absorbed. They are hovering on the surface with weak bonding. That means it doesn’t require a lot of energy to discharge.”
The crystalline material is formed into pellets and loaded into tanks. Hydrogen is stored at relatively low pressure, around 20 bar, reducing tank weight and cost and allowing for noncylindrical shapes. Only a small amount of heat—either from the ambient air or waste heat from a fuel cell—is needed to release the hydrogen.
The tank can be recharged directly from the low-pressure outlet of an electrolyzer, and the hydrogen is durably and efficiently stored in a solid concrete-like form. This approach avoids the safety risks of high-pressure tanks exploding or cryogenic liquid tanks leaking, H2MOF points out."
Basically using a polymer framework they are able to massively increase the density of the hydrogen and store it more like (wet) concrete. It doesn't need much pressurization or heat to remove the hydrogen from the polymer framework.
It's still in the development stage, but they are working on trying to create a drone that utilizes hydrogen stored like this as its fuel - "H2MOF has scaled up production of MOF to the kilogram level and produced prototype tanks, and now it is looking to partner with drone manufacturers to test the tanks beginning early next year, Chief Technology Officer Neel Sirosh says. Drones require 100-200 g of hydrogen, and the tanks are 6 in. in diameter and about 2 ft. long."
Metallic hydrogen is around double liquified hydrogen. This polymermized version takes it to a new level though. Will be interesting to see if they can get it to work. If so it can really help with the cost to distribute and store hydrogen. If it works, and it's applied to the game, it would change a lot of things!
