Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have
invented a technology which may be an important step towards
the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively
stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.
With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes
much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of
hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is
a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is
flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of
hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost
three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU,
an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet
which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid
form.
“Should you drive a car 600 km using
gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel
tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same
amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”,
says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of
Chemistry at DTU.
Dr. Tue Johannessen
The hydrogen tablet is safe and
inexpensive. In this respect it is different from most other
hydrogen storage technologies. You can literally carry the
material in your pocket without any kind of safety
precaution. The reason is that the tablet consists solely of
ammonia absorbed efficiently in sea-salt. Ammonia is
produced by a combination of hydrogen with nitrogen from the
surrounding air, and the DTU-tablet therefore contains large
amounts of hydrogen. Within the tablet, hydrogen is stored
as long as desired, and when hydrogen is needed, ammonia is
released through a catalyst that decomposes it back to free
hydrogen. When the tablet is empty, you merely give it a
“shot” of ammonia and it is ready for use again.
“The technology is a step towards making
the society independent of fossil fuels” says Professor Jens
Nørskov, director of the Nanotechnology Center at DTU. He,
Claus Hviid Christensen, Tue Johannessen, Ulrich Quaade and
Rasmus Zink Sørensen are the five researchers behind the
invention. The advantages of using hydrogen are numerous. It
is CO2-free, and it can be produced by renewable energy
sources, e.g. wind power.
“We have a new solution to one of the
major obstacles to the use of hydrogen as a fuel. And we
need new energy technologies – oil and gas will not last,
and without energy, there is no modern society”, says Jens
Nørskov.
Together with DTU and SeeD Capital
Denmark, the researchers have founded the company Amminex
A/S, which will focus on the further development and
commercialization of the technology.
Contact persons:
Prof. Claus Hviid
Christensen, Center for Sustainable and Green Chemistry,
Department of Chemistry, Building 206, Technical University
of Denmark, phone: +45 45252402,
chc@kemi.dtu.dk
Prof. Jens K. Nørskov,
Center for Atomic-scale Materials Physics, Department of
Physics, Technical University of Denmark
Building 307, DK-2800
Lyngby, Denmark, phone: +45 4525 3175,
norskov@fysik.dtu.dk
Dr. Tue Johannessen, CTO of
Amminex A/S, Kemitorvet, Building 206, DK-2800 Lyngby,
phone: +45 22546242, tj@amminex.com