Waste and Natural Materials for Hydrogen Storage Application

The hydrogen storage is one of the main problems to be solved because hydrogen is going to be the energy vector of the future. Among all developed methods, the H2 storage on solid materials (by chemical or physical sorption) is the most studied. For this aim, in the last years, the carbonaceous materials classes, such as carbon-based matrices, are analysed. Particular study is aimed at new carbon precursors, easy to prepare, cheap and environmentally friendly. All these materials show a direct correlation between the H2 adsorption capacity (77 K) and their surface area. Some of these carbonised organic materials, such as furfural, glucose, starch, cellulose and eucalyptus sawdust, are used as precursors to produce activated carbons (ACs) having a high surface area (up to 2700 m2 g-1) and a narrow size distribution pores in the range of 0,7-2 nm. Among the studied precursor a lot of these coming from different animal and vegetable wastes and interesting H2 storage values were obtained: chicken feather fibers (1,5 wt% at 77 K / 2 MPa), coffee beans (0,6 wt% at 298 K and 4 wt% at 77 K), cannabis roots (3,28 wt% at 77 K / 0,1 MPa), coconut shells (8 wt% at 77 K and 2,3 wt% at 298 K / 7 MPa), rice straw and mulberry paper (4,35 wt% at 77 K / 1 MPa), jute fibers (1,2 wt% at 303 K / 4 MPa). In this work, in addition to the above-mentioned materials, other classes will be considered, correlating their morphology and porosity with the H2 storage capacity.