[APS] Hydrogen storage

I went to a few talks in a session about Simulations of hydrogen storage. It appears that compressed gaseous hydrogen has about 10 times less energy density than gasoline. (Some quick googling found this explanation. It really matters if you're using volume or weight density - by weight hydrogen has a much higher energy density.)

John Tse talked about hydrate clathrates (there's lots of methane at the bottom of the ocean, and it may be a way to store hydrogen ).

One point I found interesting - the potential bewteen a hydrogen molecule and a graphene sheet fits a Lennard-Jones potential quite well (for one particular site or orientation).

Technical note - Doing simulations with DFT is not quite sufficient to get good energies, they used MP2 level theory. (Seems this was repeated in another talk). Question - are MP2 energies good enough, or is doing better just too expensive?

William Goddard presented theoretical evaluations of several approaches to hydrogen storage.

• Metallo-Organic Frameworks
  
• Mg nanoparticles
  
• Metal hydrides
  
• Carbon materials (nanotubes, some doped with Li)
  

In the Mg nanoparticle section, he talked about solving the inversion problem - designed the material to specifications. Their approach was find the potential (I think?) of a desirable atom, and find reals atoms to match.
(There was a similar idea presented by Alex Zunger, trying to find materials that matched specific band-related properties)