Due to the depletion of fossil fuel, increasing environmental problems and possibly increasing global mean temperature from CO2 pollution, there is an urgent need for developing new energy sources that can reduce the present use of fossil fuel. There is plenty of available renewable energy in the form of solar, wind or wave energy. However, the fact that the renewable energy sources are not constant in time presents a major problem in its utilization. The solution is a safe, cheap and efficient energy carrier, and hydrogen is a world wide target.

The instrument used for measuring hydrogen uptake during diffraction studies at Brookhaven National Laboratory

Today, the Achilles heel in the implementation of the hydrogen society is the development of a safe and economical hydrogen storage system especially for mobile applications, e.g. cars and trucks.

Thus, if transportation, which accounts for ~20% of the Danish energy consumption (but 60 % of the energy consumption in USA), is to be converted to hydrogen based technology, a breakthrough has to be established from fundamental research.

The aim of our research in this field is the development of a novel class of materials for hydrogen storage.

Read the popular science article (in Danish) (pdf: 320K)): T. R. Jensen, Aktuel Naturvidenskab, 2004, 1, 13.

The crystal structure of a possible candidate for hydrogen storage: NaAlH4