The DOE National Hydrogen Storage Project: Recent Progress in On-Board Vehicular Hydrogen Storage
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The DOE National Hydrogen Storage Project: Recent Progress in On-Board Vehicular Hydrogen Storage Carole Read1, John Petrovic2, Grace Ordaz1, Sunita Satyapal1 1 DOE Hydrogen Program, Office of Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC, 20585, USA 2 Los Alamos National Laboratory, retired (on assignment to DOE) ABSTRACT Hydrogen is under consideration by several countries for its potential as an energy carrier for transportation applications. In order to compete with vehicles in use today, hydrogenpowered vehicles will require a driving range of greater than 300-miles in order to meet customer needs and expectations. For the overall vehicular light-duty fleet, this dictates that a range of 5 to 13 kg of hydrogen be stored on-board (assuming a fuel cell power plant) within stringent system weight, volume, and cost constraints. Vehicular hydrogen storage thus constitutes a major scientific and technological challenge. To meet this challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiated a “National Hydrogen Storage Project” with roughly 40 universities, 15 companies and 10 federal laboratories, actively engaged in hydrogen storage research. Centers of Excellence in metal hydrides, chemical hydrides, and carbon-based materials have been established, as well as independent university and industry projects in the areas of new concepts/materials, hydrogen storage testing, and storage system analysis. Recent technical progress in each of these areas is discussed. INTRODUCTION U.S. petroleum dependence is driven by transportation, which accounts for two-thirds of the 20 million barrels of oil the U.S. uses each day [1]. The U.S. imports 55% of its oil, and this is expected to grow to 68% by the year 2025 under a status quo scenario [1]. Nearly all of the U.S. light-duty fleet of vehicles currently run on either gasoline or diesel fuel. This situation requires that alternative energy carriers be developed to promote future national energy security and diversity. Hydrogen has the potential to be an attractive alternative energy carrier. It can be clean and efficient when converted, and derived from diverse domestic resources, such as biomass, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear energy resources, as well as fossil fuels (e.g. coal, natural gas or petroleum oil). Hydrogen can then be employed in highefficiency power generation systems, including fuel cells or internal combustion engines for both vehicular transportation and distributed electricity generation. The potential energy security and diversity benefits of hydrogen are the basis of the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative launched by President Bush in January 2003. The Hydrogen Fuel Initiative commits government funding for accelerated research, development, and demonstration programs that will enable an industry decision on commercialization of hydrogen technologies by the year 2015. Should industry decide to proceed, a full transition to a U.S. hydrogen economy would require decades. Although the impleme
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