Comparison of hydrogen hydrates with existing hydrogen storage technologies: Energetic and economic evaluations

With the development of the hydrogen economy and FCV (fuel cell vehicles), the manner of storing and delivering large quantities of hydrogen arises as a major problem, and increasing research efforts are being targeted to solve this technological issue. Nowadays several hydrogen storage methodologies are available. Technologies are being developed and/or engineered other than the classical compression and liquefaction of hydrogen, which are based on the chemical (metal hydrides, ammonia) and physical (e.g., carbon nanotubes) adsorption of H2. Also, a novel technology is in progress, which is based on clathrate hydrates of hydrogen. The object of the present work is to evaluate the features and performances of those storing systems with the aim to determine the best available technology throughout the “hydrogen chain”. For each one of the storage solutions presented, we have compared key parameters such as: interaction energy between hydrogen and support, storage capacity, specific energy consumption (SEC). By this work, it is demonstrated that a technology based on clathrate hydrates of hydrogen, while far from being optimized, may be competitive with the other approaches.