Address/Country
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz 1, 45470 Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany
Institution name and department
Max-Planck-‘Institut für Kohlenforschung
Position held
Group leader
Key words
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Hydrogen and heat storage
The main research is the synthesis and characterization of new materials for the storage of hydrogen and heat. The focus is on complex aluminum hydride compounds, which are materials with high hydrogen storage capacities.
Metal hydrides can not only store high amounts of hydrogen, they have also the property to store huge amounts of heat. In this case hydrogen is only a process gas and not consumed during the heat storage or release.
Light weight metal hydrides based on magnesium can be used as heat storage materials at temperatures up to 550°C. Therefore they can store huge amounts of heat for e.g. solar thermal power plants. Over the daytime the high temperature metal hydride is decomposed through solar heat and releases hydrogen. The hydrogen is temporarily stored in a gas tank or in a low temperature metal hydride. During the night the stored heat can be recovered from the reaction of the magnesium metal with hydrogen. Our aim is the optimization and demonstration of heat storage units and materials for this application.
High-energy ball milling, mechano catalysis
The synthesis of organic and inorganic compounds can often be simplified through mechanical activation. Solvents are not necessary, the reaction time is often reduced and completely unknown compounds can be synthesized. Reactions under gas pressure (up to 300 bar) can be done directly in a ball mill with in-situ observation of the reaction conditions by a telemetric data logging system.
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