Helmholtz Initiative "FuncHy - Functional Materials for Mobile Hydrogen Storage" (2005 - 2010)
Exploratory focus of the Helmholtz Initiative 'FuncHy: Functional Materials for mobile Hydrogen Storage' is the development of novel light-weight hydrogen storage materials. The project combines various scientific and technical approaches and methods, considering the total value-added chain from fundamentals of materials science to production on industrial scale. For this, FuncHy assembles five renowned European research institutions with complementary experience in the field of hydrogen storage materials. Together with associated partners from industry and academia, FuncHy provides a basis for a European centre of excellence for hydrogen technology for mobile applications.
Scheme of the Reaction taking place in a Reactive Hydrogen Composite during Hydrogen Unloading
Solid storage offers the best opportunities for meeting the requirements of on-board storage. Within Europe, considerable effort has been put into the search for materials suitable for hydrogen storage through various fragmented and clustered EU and national projects, for both stationary and mobile applications. While the results for stationary and portable applications have in few cases reached some of their targets (e.g. EU project HYSTORY), the demands for transport applications for car industry, in terms of storage kinetics, weight ratio and operating conditions, have not yet been met. There is some disagreement in theses demands. However, the large variability of some technical targets mainly depends on the various applications and is, somehow, locally influenced: a range of 600-700 km is foreseen for USA passenger cars (2000-2500 kg of gross vehicle weight, GVW), much heavier than the reference cars for Japan and Europe (1000 kg of GVW). The relevance of the various technical targets is evident, when comparing the fuel economy of an American passenger fuel cell vehicle of 7 kg of hydrogen for 560 km range with the consumption of a European passenger car aiming at 3.1 kg of hydrogen for a 500 km range (Mario Conte in 'Materials Science and Engineering Bulletin, 108 (2004) 2-8). FuncHy refers to the requirements on a storage system for vehicle applications, as proposed by the European Hydrogen project "StorHy: Hydrogen Storage Systems for Automotive Applications":
- reversible hydrogen storage capacity of more than 5 wt.% = 2 Wh/kg
- desorption temperature of less than 150°C
- capacity loss per 10 cycles of less than 0.2%
- storage of 5 kg hydrogen, tank volume less than 120 l
- fast sorption kinetics: tank filling within 3 min
An intensive co-operation with the Helmholtz Virtual Institute "Asymmetric Structures for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells", with the European Integrated Projects "StorHy: Hydrogen Storage Systems for Automotive Applications" and "NESSHY: Novel Efficient Solid Storage for Hydrogen" and the FP7 project "NANOHY” is existing. Furthermore all of the FuncHy Core Partners are also members of the European Marie Curie Training Network "COSY: Complex Solid State Reactions for Energy Efficient Hydrogen Storage".
