The “Eureka moment” as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough

Australian researchers have found a new way to safely separate, store and transport large amounts of gas that could be the missing piece of the puzzle for renewable hydrogen.

The number of renewable hydrogens is huge in Australia’s net zero emissions plan – particularly in the hard-to-decarbonise industrial and heavy transport sectors. But storing and transporting large amounts of gas for practical applications remains a major challenge.

A team from Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) in Melbourne says it has found a new mechanochemical way to separate and store gases, which is safe, uses less energy than traditional methods and produces no waste.

The team said the breakthrough, detailed in the journal Materials Today, was a departure from accepted wisdom on gas separation and storage and had to be repeated 20 to 30 times before it could be trusted.

“We were very surprised to see this happen, but every time we kept getting the exact same results, it was a eureka moment,” said lead researcher Dr Srikanth Mateti.

“There is no waste, the process does not require harsh chemicals and produces no by-products. …This means you can store hydrogen anywhere and use it whenever you need it.”

This breakthrough is the culmination of three decades of work led by Alfred Deakin Professor Ying (Ian) Chen, Chair of IFM Nanotechnology, and his team.

The main ingredient in this breakthrough is boron nitride powder, which has the ability to absorb substances, small in size, but with a large surface area. It is also classed as a “level-0 chemical,” something that is considered very safe to have in your home.

The researchers fed boron nitride powder into a ball mill — a type of grinder that contains tiny stainless steel balls in a chamber — along with the gases that need to be separated.

As the chamber rotates at higher and higher speeds, the ball collides with the powder and the chamber walls trigger a mechanochemical reaction resulting in the gas being absorbed into the powder.

One type of gas is absorbed more quickly, separating it from the other, and allowing it to be easily removed from the plant. This process can be repeated in several steps to separate the gases one by one.

Overall, this process consumes 76.8 KJ/s to store and separate 1000L of gas, which means it uses at least 90 percent less than current gas separation processes commonly used in the petroleum industry.

More importantly, once the gas is absorbed into the powder, it can be transported safely and easily. When gas is needed, the powder can be easily heated in a vacuum to release the unchanged gas.

“The current way of storing hydrogen is in high pressure tanks, or by cooling the gas into a liquid form. Both require large amounts of energy, as well as hazardous processes and chemicals,” said Professor Chen.

“We showed there was a mechanochemical alternative, using ball milling to store gas in nanomaterials at room temperature. It doesn’t require high pressures or low temperatures, so it would offer a much cheaper and safer way to develop things like hydrogen-powered vehicles.

The next step for the IFM team was to gather industry support and scale the process to full pilot. A provisional patent application has been filed for the process.

“We need to further validate this method with industry to develop practical applications,” said Professor Chen.

“To move this from the laboratory to a larger industrial scale, we needed to verify that this process is cost-effective, more efficient and faster than traditional gas separation and storage methods.”

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