Project Portugal 2030

Summary

This project aims to develop and use new organic metal free materials to store hydrogen at ambient pressure and temperature and release it when requested. Those new organic metal-free materials would be more flexible, safe, cheap and efficient than the actual metal based hydrogen adsorption materials. We intend to do that by using (A) natural unsaturated compounds of the chlorins and porphyrins family and (B) long-chain alkanes (Figure 3) as appropriate materials for reversible hydrogen (H2) storage, The work package (A) relies on chemical bonding through hydrogenation of double bonds and work package (B) relies on instantaneous dipole - induced dipole van der Waals intermolecular physical interactions. Also as complementary work we intend to develop graphene and carbon derivatives to store hydrogen and release it when requested. In this goal we will investigate the possibility of storing hydrogen in graphene and natural carbon rich, metal free materials like natural coals and natural vegetable waxes, in processes based in physical interactions. Despite several recent theoretical studies that show that those metal-free materials are very promising for hydrogen adsorption, the experimental research on those materials is still marginal and we need an intensive research in these metal-free organic adsorption compounds.