DOE Hydrogen Sorption Center of Excellence

In April 2004, DOE announced an initiative to help lead the United States to its hydrogen-powered future. Three new centers of excellence, supported by DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, were named in the area of hydrogen storage. These centers leverage the expertise of the DOE national laboratories in partnership with academia and industry.

The DOE Hydrogen Sorption Center of Excellence, coordinated by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), is one of these centers. The other two are dedicated to hydrogen storage via metal hydrides (coordinated by Sandia National Laboratories) and chemical hydrides (coordinated jointly by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

Developing fuel-cell-powered vehicles for the transportation sector is key to implementing a hydrogen-based energy economy. The rewards—reducing our nation's dependence on imported petroleum and reducing emissions of pollutants—are huge. Critical to that mission is establishing safe and efficient technologies for storing hydrogen. The three centers are focused on that goal. They are addressing the major technical barrier to on-board hydrogen storage: storing enough hydrogen to enable a greater than 300-mile driving range without impacting cargo or passenger space.

A recent article in Wired News is pertinent to NREL's research in this area.

Who We Are

NREL assists DOE in coordinating the activities within the Hydrogen Sorption Center of Excellence with input from a steering committee of representatives from NREL, the California Institute of Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of Michigan, and Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Other center members are Duke University, Miami University of Ohio, Pennsylvania State University, Rice University, University of Chicago, University of North Carolina, Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Start-Up Plans

Each member brings specific expertise to the table, which fosters the Hydrogen Sorption Center's near-term goals to:

• Accelerate research and development (R&D) of carbon-based hydrogen storage materials
• Create a fast-moving, team-interactive environment
• Integrate management of technology-driven R&D.

In the first two years of the five-year center, the focus will be on determining the relationship between nanoscale structure and the energetics of hydrogen binding using a variety of experimental and theoretical techniques and well-defined nanostructured materials. Through synergistic efforts, we expect to be able to determine the limits of performance within specific material systems and extract general mechanistic information that can be used for further design and optimization. The center will begin to focus on solutions that have the potential to meet the DOE FY 2010 targets in the third year, and ramp-up the scale of the material production and testing in years four and five so that a system capable of delivering 1 kg of H₂ may be built.

Targets from FreedomCAR Partnership

Developed through the FreedomCAR Partnership, these targets address "real-world" goals to make commercially viable and practical vehicular hydrogen storage a reality. The targets listed here present the main technical barriers and are a subset of all the identified targets. The FreedomCAR Partnership was initiated in January of 2002 between the United States Council for Automotive Research and DOE. For more information, visit hydrogen and fuel cells and vehicles and fuels.

Targets for On-Board Hydrogen Storage Targets assume a 5-kg H2 storage system Source: DOE EERE HFCIT Program