ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and compares the different options for hydrogen storage in pressure vessels. Compressed (ambient temperature and high pressure), liquid (very low temperature and low pressure), and cryogenic pressure vessels (low temperature and high pressure) are all described and analyzed from a thermodynamic point of view, in which key performance figures: Weight and volume performance, capital cost, fuel delivery and dispensing, dormancy, refueling, and safety are shown to be controlled by thermodynamic functions such as density, internal energy, exergy, enthalpy, and entropy. Unlike other fuels, hydrogen (H2) can be generated and consumed without producing car-
bon dioxide (CO2). This creates both significant engineering challenges and unsurpassed ecological advantages for H2 as a fuel while enabling an inexhaustible (closed) global fuel cycle based on the cleanest, most abundant, natural, and elementary substances: H2, O2, and H2O. If generated using light, heat, or electrical energy from solar, wind, fission, or (future) fusion power sources, H2 becomes a versatile, storable, and universal carbonless energy carrier, a necessary element for future global energy systems aimed at being free of air and water pollution, CO2, and other greenhouse gases [1]. This has been discussed in Chapter 1.
