TANK

The technology for the generation and usage of hydrogen as a fuel is established however as present the best

way to store the hydrogen is to pressurise the gas to 350 bar and above. That is 350 times atmospheric

pressure. This has cost and safety considerations. Handling high pressure hydrogen requires thick and heavy

metal cylinders or bulky composite cylinders. Electrolysers driven by electricity from renewables or from the

national grid can readily generate hydrogen but this is at low pressures. Thus mechanical gas compressors are

needed to compress the gas to above 350 bar. Such mechanical compressors are expensive and require

constant maintenance and storing large quantities of hydrogen at high pressure requires blast zones. Being

able to store the majority of gas at low pressure utilising metal hydride (MH) solid state stores not only is safer

but it requires much less volume of space. Also fuel cells (which convert hydrogen and oxygen to water and

electricity) operate at these low pressures too. So for certain stationary applications storing hydrogen utilisng a

low pressure MH store makes sense and this project will build a prototype and explore this market.