Development of Advanced Composite Pressure Vessels for Hydrogen Storage

Evgeniy Mervinetsky, Chemistry, The Hebrew Univer, Jerusalem, Israel (evgeniy.mervinetsky@mail.huji.ac.il)
Daniel Mandler, Chemistry, The Hebrew Univer, Jerusalem, Israel

Energy production from renewable sources instead of fossil fuel-based energy sources is crucial to combat climate changes and significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions. However, renewable sources such as solar, wind, and hydro energy are extremely weather dependent, and hence, require a bulk system to store the excess energy to fulfill the energy needs constantly. During the last decades, hydrogen became a promising green and clean alternative to classical batteries as effective energy storage. Hydrogen has the highest energy content by weight unit and can be stored in different quantities by several techniques. Moreover, hydrogen can be produced from different sources, and hence, can be effectively integrated with renewable energy storage.

While hydrogen demand and production are growing, the increasing need for effective hydrogen storage is still one of the significant and critical issues in the development of the so-called "hydrogen economy". The state-of-the-art techniques for hydrogen storage are based on fully metallic pressure vessels, while the weight parameter is a significant limitation of this storage, especially for automotive applications. Alternatively, composite storage vessels offer high strength and low weight but frequently suffer from limited gas locking properties.

Herein, we suggest improving the hydrogen barrier of the vessel's polymer shell by integrating of metallic inner liner in the cylinder. Our strategy includes the selection of the appropriate polymer for the vessel's shell, the development of electrochemical-derived metal coating, and hydrogen permeation analysis. The metal coating of the polymer shell involves the development of electroless deposition of Ni layer and further electroplating of Cu layer. The metallic coating aimed significantly decrease the hydrogen permeability through the polymer but is also based on the prevention of the well-known hydrogen embrittlement. In this way, we suggest a novel multilayer polymer-metallic vessel for effective hydrogen storage.