The goal of the EU Horizon 2020 RISE project 778307 “Hydrogen fuelled utility vehicles and their support systems utilising metal hydrides” (HYDRIDE4MOBILITY), is in addressing critical issues towards a commercial implementation of hydrogen powered forklifts using metal hydride (MH) based hydrogen storage and PEM fuel cells, together with the systems for their refuelling at industrial customers facilities. For these applications, high specific weight of the metallic hydrides has an added value, as it allows counterbalancing of a vehicle with no extra cost. Improving the rates of H2 charge/discharge in MH on the materials and system level, simplification of the design and reducing the system cost, together with improvement of the efficiency of system “MH store-FC”, is in the focus of this work as a joint effort of consortium uniting academic teams and industrial partners from two EU and associated countries Member States (Norway, Germany, Croatia), and two partner countries (South Africa and Indonesia).The work within the project is focused on the validation of various efficient and cost-competitive solutions including (i) advanced MH materials for hydrogen storage and compression, (ii) advanced MH containers characterised by improved charge-discharge dynamic performance and ability to be mass produced, (iii) integrated hydrogen storage and compression/refuelling systems which are developed and tested together with PEM fuel cells during the collaborative efforts of the consortium.This article gives an overview of HYDRIDE4MOBILITY project focused on the results generated during its first phase (2017–2019).

Performance of the thermally-driven metal hydride hydrogen compressor (MHHC) is defined by (a) its H-2 compression ratio and maximum output H-2 pressure; (b) throughput productivity/average output flow rate; (c) specific thermal energy consumption which determines H-2 compression efficiency. In earlier studies, the focus of the R&D efforts was on the optimisation of the design of the MH containers and heat and mass transfer in the MH storage and compression systemaimed at shortening the time of the H-2 compression cycle. This work considers an important but insufficiently studied aspect of the development of the industrial-scale thermally driven MHHC's - selection of the materials and optimisation of the materials performance. Further to the operation in the specified pressure/temperature ranges, materials selection should be based on the estimation of the productivity of the compression cycle, and specific heat consumption required for the H-2 compression, which together determine the process efficiency. The current work presents a model to determine productivity and heat consumption for a single- and multi-stage MHHC's which is based on use of Pressure - Composition - Temperature (PCT) diagrams of the utilized metal hydrides at defined operating conditions e temperatures and hydrogen pressures - and main operational features of the MHHC (number of stages, amounts of the MH materials used, cycle time). In Part I of this work [Lototskyy, Yartys, et al., Int J Hydrogen Energy, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2020.10.090], we showed that the calculated cycle productivities significantly vary for the different materials. Analysis of the system performance carried out in this work (Part II) shows that the throughput productivity and efficiency of a multi-stage MHHC also depends on the types and amounts of the used MH materials in the multi-stage compressor layout. This has been analysed for a number of the most practically important AB(5) and Laves type AB(2) hydrogen storage alloys integrated into the MHHC's. A comparison of experimentally measured performances of single-, two- and three-stage industrial-scale MHHC's developed by the authors earlier shows their satisfactory agreement with the modelling results thus demonstrating a high value of the presented method for the proper materials selection during development of the MHHC. As an important future development, the work presents a performance evaluation of a two-stage MHHC for H-2 compression operating in the pressure range from 30 to 500 atm at operating temperatures between 20 and 150 degrees C. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mg nanoparticles in Mg–Ti–C do not sinter but, on the contrary, are further refined thus dramatically improving the cycle stability.

Metal hydride (MH) thermal sorption compression is one of the more important applications of the MHs. The present paper reviews recent advances in the field based on the analysis of the fundamental principles of this technology. The performances when boosting hydrogen pressure, along with two- and three-step compression units, are analyzed. The paper includes also a theoretical modelling of a two-stage compressor aimed at describing the performance of the experimentally studied systems, their optimization and design of more advanced MH compressors. Business developments in the field are reviewed for the Norwegian company HYSTORSYS AS and the South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry. Finally, future prospects are outlined presenting the role of the MH compression in the overall development of the hydrogen-driven energy systems. The work is based on the analysis of the development of the technology in Europe, USA and South Africa.