Fuel cell electric vehicles have a long way to go before they can compete with their battery EV cousins, and energy storage is a key sticking point when the fuel is hydrogen. Hydrogen is light, plentiful, and fabulously energy dense, but energy storage in a personal mobility unit racing down a crowded highway is a different kind of chicken. Safety, cost, and performance are critical sticking points, and a research team at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is on to a solution for at least one of those.

Energy Storage Challenges For Hydrogen Fuel Cell EVs

The US Energy Department’s 2015 annual report provides a birds-eye view of the array of energy storage solutions that are emerging for hydrogen fuel cells, including advancements in hydrogen tank technology as well as solids-based storage.

Despite the progress, according to the Energy Department, challenges still remain for stationary and portable fuel cells in terms of raising the energy storage density, and there are “significant challenges” for fuel cell EVs. The problem is this:

Hydrogen has the highest energy per mass of any fuel; however, its low ambient temperature density results in a low energy per unit volume, therefore requiring the development ofadvanced storage methods that have potential for higher energy density.

The Energy Department has set a goal of 2020 for achieving verifiable hydrogen storage systems for light duty fuel cell EVs that meet the driving public’s thirst for range, comfort, refueling convenience, and performance. Here are the targets:

1.8 kWh/kg system (5.5 wt.% hydrogen)

1.3 kWh/L system (0.040 kg hydrogen/L)

$10/kWh ($333/kg stored hydrogen capacity)

Fuel cell EVs are already leaking into the transportation scene, particularly in California, Japan, and the European Union, notably including Wales.

However, the Energy Department is already looking beyond the current state of on-road technology to meet its 2020 goal. According to the agency, the 300-mile range is being met by using compressed gas, high pressure energy storage technology, and the problem is that competing technology on the market today — primarily gasmobiles and hybrids — already exceeds that range.

To compete for consumers on the open market, the agency is pursuing a near-term goal of improving compressed gas storage, primarily by deploying fiber reinforced composites that enable 700 bar pressure.

The long term goal consists of two pathways. One is to improve “cold” compressed gas energy storage technology, and the other is to go a different route altogether and store hydrogen within materials such as sorbents, chemical hydrogen storage materials, and metal hydrides.

The Berkeley Lab Energy Storage Solution

Where were we? Oh right, Berkeley Lab. Berkeley Lab has been tackling the metal hydride pathway.

Metal hydrides are compounds that consist of a transition metal bonded to hydrogen. They are believed to be the most “technologically relevant” class of materials for storing hydrogen, partly due to the broad range of applications.

That’s the theory. The problem is that when it comes to real world performance, metal hydrides are highly sensitive to contamination and they degrade somewhat rapidly unless properly shielded.

The Berkeley Lab energy storage solution consists of a graphene “filter” encasing nanocrystals of magnesium. With the addition of the graphene layer, the magnesium crystals act as a sort of sponge for absorbing hydrogen, providing both safety and compactness without causing performance issues:

The graphene shields the nanocrystals from oxygen and moisture and contaminants, while tiny, natural holes allow the smaller hydrogen molecules to pass through. This filtering process overcomes common problems degrading the performance of metal hydrides for hydrogen storage.

Berkeley Lab has provided this photo to show off how stable the crystals are when exposed to air (for scale, the bottle cap is about the size of a thumbnail):

At one atom thick (yes, one atom), graphene is known to be an incredibly finicky material to work with. It is extremely difficult to synthesize it without defects, but that’s not a problem for this energy storage solution. The defects are actually desirable in this case. The tiny gaps enable molecules of hydrogen gas to wriggle through, but oxygen, water, and other contaminants are too large to penetrate the shield.

The new energy formula also solves another key challenge for metal hydrides. They tend to take in and dispense hydrogen at a relatively slow pace, but the Berkeley Lab solution has sped up the intake-outflow cycle significantly. That effect is attributed to the nanoscale size of the graphene-shielded crystals, which provide a greater surface area.

Energy Department Gets The Last Word?

We’ve been having a lively debate about fuel cell electric EVs over here at CleanTechnica, so let’s hear from the Berkeley Lab team:

A potential advantage for hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles, in addition to their reduced environmental impact over standard-fuel vehicles, is the high specific energy of hydrogen, which means that hydrogen fuel cells can potentially take up less weight than other battery systems and fuel sources while yielding more electrical energy.

However, the team also makes it clear that:

More R&D is needed to realize higher-capacity hydrogen storage for long-range vehicle applications that exceed the performance of existing electric-vehicle batteries…

Among other issues, the next step for a sustainable fuel cell EV future is to develop sustainable andrenewable sources for hydrogen fuel. Currently the main source of hydrogen is natural gas, which puts fuel cell EVs in the same boat as battery EVs that draw electricity from a coal or natural gas-fired grid.