Understanding Simple Metal Hydrides and Their Structures

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Simple metal hydrides contain hydrogen in their crystal structure. These simple metal hydrides include binary and intermetallic hydrides. Binary hydrides contain only one metal and generally represented as MHx, were M stands for metal. The intermetallic hydrides contain at least two metals in addition to the hydrogen and generally represented by the formula AmBnHx, where A, B are metals. These are further classified in to AB (CsCl structure), AB2 (Laves phase), A2B (AlB2 structure type), AB5 (CuC5 structure type). In these hydrides, metal A has strong affinity for hydrogen and B does not interact with hydrogen.

The binary metal hydride containing high gravimetric storage capacity is alane (AlH3) with 10.1 wt%. Another important simple metal hydride is MgH2. Binary metal hydrides generally have low storage capacity. Among the intermetallic compounds, LaNi5H6 is widely used and commercially available …show more content…

These complex metal hydrides have high gravimetric storage capacity than the simple metal hydrides. Nitrogen containing hydrides such as amines or imides, and boron containing hydrides (borohydrides) are the main categories in complex metal hydrides. Lithium imide (Li2NH), magnesium amide (Mg(NH2)2), lithium borohydride (LiBH4) and sodium borohydride (NaBH4) are the actively explored complex metal hydrides for the hydrogen storage applications. Li2NH reversibly store 6.5 wt% of hydrogen however the required temperature to burn the fuel is high and cannot be used in onboard vehicles. In addition, amides and imides produce ammonia as the effluent. The LiBH4 and NaBH4 have a very high gravimetric storage capacity of up to 18 wt%. However, desorption temperature of 673 K is required to remove the hydrogen atoms. Thus these complex metal hydrides are not promising materials for hydrogen storage (Satyapal et al (2007 & Durbin & Malardier-Jugroot

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