Confined LiBH4: Enabling fast hydrogen release at ∼100 °C

LiBH4 has been attracted tremendous research interest as a hydrogen storage material for mobile applications due to its very high gravimetric hydrogen capacity of 18.6 wt%. However, its real use is heavily hindered by the high operational temperature that is required above 350 °C to release hydrogen with various recent improvements. This is obviously much higher than the ambient temperature of about 100 °C. In this paper, we report the synthesis of LiBH4 confined by SBA-15 template, which achieves fast hydrogen release of LiBH4 at ∼100 °C. The confined LiBH4 system starts to release hydrogen at only 45 °C and can release 8.5 wt% hydrogen (on the basis of LiBH4 itself) within 10 min at 105 °C, which opens a new window and overcome the most challenging barrier to realize practical hydrogen storage of LiBH4.

► Nano LiBH4 particles less than 9 nm were prepared on SBA-15 by impregnation.
► The confined LiBH4 system starts to release hydrogen at only 45 °C.
► 8.5 wt% hydrogen (on the basis of LiBH4 itself) can be released within 10 min at 105 °C.
► First report that the main H2 releasing peak of LiBH4 reduced to lower than 100 °C.