The complexity and expense of storage infrastructure, which have been the logistical thorns in the side of the hydrogen economy, might be removed with the advent of a manganese hydride molecular sieve. The material could support the storage of four times as much hydrogen in the same volume as existing hydrogen fuel technologies.

The manganese hydride harnesses Kubas chemical binding interactions that serve to distance atoms within a Orbital interaction between manganese hydride and hydrogen molecule. Source: L. Morris et al/ The Royal Society of Chemistry 2019hydrogen molecule without the need to split the molecule. The process works at room temperature and around 120 bar compared to current hydrogen storage systems that typically operate at around 700 bar. After the porous material absorbs hydrogen, the gas is released from the storage tank into a fuel cell when the pressure is released.

Hydrogen storage systems based on metal-oxide frameworks require high temperatures to split these atomic bonds and therefore require thermal management equipment, which the Kubas manganese hydride technology does not. Tanks could therefore be engineered to be smaller, cheaper and more energy dense than existing hydrogen fuel technologies.

The manganese hydride system described in Energy and Environmental Science offers potential for fuel cell systems to outperform lithium-ion batteries in vehicular applications as well as in drones and portable electronics. Researchers from University of South Wales, University of Manchester (U.K.), Hydro-Quebec Research Institute, Paul Scherrer Institut (Switzerland), Texas Tech University and Lancaster University (U.K.) contributed to this development.