Promising material for hydrogen storage

A Swedish research team led by Professor Rajeev Ahuja has reported a highest hydrogen capacity for the hydrogen storage material called metal-organic framework-5 (MOF-5) . These findings are being published in this week’s Net edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

Our energy-hungry world has become increasingly depending on new methods to store and convert energy for new, environmentally friendly modes of transportation and electrical energy generation as well as for portable electronics . Mobility — the transport of people and goods — is a socioeconomic reality that will surely increase in the coming years. Hydrogen, which can be produced with little or no harmful emissions, has been projected as a long term solution for a secure energy future. Research into safe and efficient means of hydrogen production, storage, and use is essential to make the “hydrogen economy” a reality.

For application of hydrogen in the transportation sector hydrogen storage materials must meet the requirement of high gravimetric and volumetric densities and fast kinetics and favorable thermodynamics. A very promising prospective approach is to store molecular hydrogen in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which is a class of nanoporous materials. In these systems, the hydrogen sorption processes display good reversibility and fast kinetics. However, the weak dispersive interactions that hold H2 molecules require low operations temperatures and/or high pressures. In this work, we have studied in particular MOF-5 which consists of 1,4-benzenedicarboxylate linkers joining Zn4O clusters to form a periodic cubic framework. Our quantum mechanical calculations show that the adsorption of lithium atoms on the organic linkers will greatly increase the strength of the hydrogen molecule binding to the framework, increasing the temperature at which hydrogen can be stored in MOFs. This discovery make MOFs more suitable for being used as hydrogen storage materials.

The extensive numerical studies were performed at Uppsala University’s Uppsala Multidisciplinary Center for Advanced Computational Science, UPPMAX.

For more information, please contact Andreas Blomqvist, phone: +46 (0)18-471 5852; e-mail: Andreas.Blomqvist@fysik.uu.se, Moyses Araujo, phone: +46 (0)18-471 3584; e-mail: Moyses.Araujo@fysik.uu.se or Professor Rajeev Ahuja, phone: +46 (0)18-471 36 26; cell phone: +46 (0)70-425 09 35; e-mail: Rajeev.Ahuja@fysik.uu.se