The researcher, Shuguang Deng, assistant professor of chemical engineering, said the new method, "metal-organic framework," bonds copper with several organic chemicals in a porous material to attract and store hydrogen in a relatively pure state.
Deng said hydrogen fuel cell cars may be commercially available by 2015 but there is not yet a practical and inexpensive way to store hydrogen inside of an automobile.

Karim Nice of www.howstuffworks.com said hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity by converting hydrogen and oxygen into water in an electrochemical reaction.

Unlike previous forms of hydrogen storage, the metal-organic framework is inexpensive, easy to synthesize and has a relatively long lifetime, Deng said.

The material, consisting of copper and several complicated benzene rings, costs a few dollars per pound to produce, and Deng's new method of using microwaves to synthesize the material may take between minutes and hours, he said.
Deng said he has not yet synthesized any of the new material but is very close to doing so.
Deng said the U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal to have hydrogen account for 9 percent of the weight of a storage tank by 2010.
Currently, the maximum hydrogen weight of any storage device does not exceed 5 percent, but Deng said he hopes the metal-organic framework will surpass the DOE standard.

Deng said the scientific community has a more concrete understanding of the metal-organic framework than the other methods. This will enable engineers to more easily improve the metal organic framework to meet higher standards.

Other concepts for storing hydrogen for fuel cells include a metal-hydride device, which is similar in design to that of a battery and can be recharged with hydrogen, Deng said. These devices have a short lifetime before wearing out, he said, and are very expensive to replace, making these devices a poor option for the automotive industry.

It would be very impractical to try to store compressed hydrogen in a car due to the extremely low temperature required, Deng said. Also, high-pressure methods of storage carry risks of changing minor collisions into fatally violent explosions, Deng said.

Deng's research is funded by WERC: A Consortium for Environmental Education and Technology Development. Abbas Ghassemi, director of WERC, said Deng's research has received nearly $100,000 out of the research budget of WERC that normally consists of $400,000-$600,000 per year.

"The focus of the WERC program ... has been innovative research that would lead to independence including energy security," Ghassemi said Tuesday.

Ghassemi said the results of Deng's research project could be applicable in many ways other than just hydrogen storage, such as water purification.

The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of June, at which time Deng will present his research to the DOE and the National Science Foundation to bargain for more funding and continue research on a much larger scale.