Polymer and composite foam for hydrogen storage application

Polymeric foams are a potential practical method of on-board vehicular hydrogen storage. The underlying concept by which these foams are being pursued is hydrostatic pressure retainment (HPR). An HPR pressure vessel uses a microscopic foam structure as a structural membrane to store the gas in enclosed cells. The accomplishments of this study were three-fold. First, ideal structural arrangements have proven to be a feasibly sound method for hydrogen storage. Second, an efficient methodology for examination of cellular polymers under internal pressure was developed. Third, this method was applied to two actual polymeric foams for examination as a hydrogen storage media. Cross-linked PVC foam and elastomeric polyurethane foam were chosen, neither of which will meet the hydrogen tank performance characteristic specified by the FreedomCAR project. The work of this study used scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray computed micro-tomography (micro-CT), compression testing, rapid prototyping and finite element methods (FEM).