New project to deliver cleaner and cheaper hydrogen

Researchers have been awarded funding to deliver safer, cleaner and cheaper hydrogen power. 

The researchers at London South Bank University (LSBU) and the School of the Built Environment and Architecture will investigate using hydride to absorb, release and store hydrogen.

This would remove the need for large high-pressure cylinders which is the way hydrogen is currently stored on buses.

They hope that by using smaller cylinders this would make more space on hydrogen-powered buses and could also provide the bus with cooling power for air conditioning.

LSBU has been awarded £60,000 of government funding from Innovate UK for the project.

They will work closely with industry experts in thermal management, Ricardo, on design and analysis in the first phase. This will be followed by the development of a prototype of new hydrogen storage in the second phase of the project.

Professor Yunting Ge, LSBU professor of building services engineering, said: ‘Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles produce very low carbon emissions and no air pollution which makes them vital to cleaning our air and tackling climate change. But important concerns have been raised about the size, cost and safety of hydrogen storage in buses.

‘Our LSBU project aims to develop a safer and cheaper way of storing hydrogen which takes up less space than the large high-pressure hydrogen tanks that are used in buses today. This is another example of LSBU’s ground-breaking research work to curb climate change, cut carbon emissions and clean our air.’

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