COSY funded to develop hydrogen storage technology

EU funding

The Marie Curie Research Training Network has launched a research programme, Complex Solid State Reactions for Energy Efficient Hydrogen Storage (COSY), with €2.5 million in EU funding, to develop new types of reactive light-metal hydride composites that can be used for more effective storage of hydrogen.

The four year programme will involve 13 participants from around Europe and will be coordinated by GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht.

While hydrogen can easily be produced from renewable resources its use as an energy source for mobile devices such as cars, laptops and cameras is not practicable because of the large size and weight of existing hydrogen storage systems.

Over the next four years the scientists involved in the COSY network will be working to develop new nano-structured composites of various light-metal hydrides for use as storage materials.

“Light-metal hydrides are solid materials that chemically bind hydrogen atoms and release them again when heated,” explains Rüdiger Bormann, Director of the Institute for Materials Research at GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht and coordinator of COSY.

“The reactive hydride composites discovered by the scientists at GKSS-Forschungszentrum Geesthacht will allow us to significantly increase the storage density.”