The UNITA Universitas Montium is an alliance of six universities from five countries (France, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain). It envisages promoting the socio economic development of their rural and cross-border mountain areas.

The University of Turin participates in the H2020 Project “Research for UNITA (RE-UNITA)“, which will focus on the aim of the alliance, so it becomes a major player in the creation of the new European Research Area. One of the core research subjects of the project is Renewable energies.

In the newsletter No. 11 of the Re-UNITA, the HyCARE project is mentioned.

HyCARE project coordinator Marcello Baricco participated to the 2nd FRH2 meeting organized by CNRS in Aussois (France). The meeting gathered more than 150 participants with more than a hundred oral presentations by young doctoral students, internationally recognized researchers and industrialists. This unique national event made it possible to take stock of current and future research on hydrogen storage devices, on all types of fuel cells, electrolysers, as well as on associated systems.

Baricco presented the “hydrogen cycle” and stressed the key role of storage to support the uptake of renewable energy sources. The HyCARE storage system was presented as an innovative technology for green hydrogen storage, allowing seasonal storage to support the wider use of renewables.

Download here the programme of the meeting (in French).

Congratulations to the first HyCARE’s PhD awarded by the chemistry Department of the University of Turin to Dr. Jussara Barale. Under the supervision of Prf. Marcello Baricco, Dr. Barale performed research on hydrogen storage and compression systems based on metal hydride. The work of Dr. Barale was fundamental to understand the properties of metal hydrides in combination to phase changing materials for hydrogen storage.

HyCARE’s researcher F.Cuevas hold a webinar in the Master “Energías y Combustibles para el Futuro” of the Autonoma University of Madrid (Spain) on the research activities performed in the framework of HyCARE. Twelve students were actively engaged in the presentation. The webinar presented the activities and results including alloy design, tuning to thermodynamic operational conditions, activation and kinetic issues, as well as cycling stability, resistance to impurities and limited use of raw critical materials.

Download the pdf to know more about the content of the presentation!

Energy Materials for Innovation – EM4I

4^th EERA workshop & 1^st AMPEA-E3S joint workshop on “Sustainability Assessment of materials and technologies for a clean energy transition”

Since the summer of 2021, the EERA network is hosting a workshop series on “Energy Materials for Innovation (EM4I)”. The series, consisting in six workshops, covers the integral stages of materials research, from discovery to scale-up productions, device development, industrial integration and sustainability, as well as cross-cutting technologies supporting these actions.

The fourth of the series focuses on “Sustainability assessment of materials and technologies for a clean energy transition”. The workshop, with the participation of AMPEA-E3S researchers, aimed to develop mutual understanding of societal needs and technological advances and to foster new collaborations necessary for achieving the Clean Energy Transition.

The contribution presented by HyCARE’s researcher Mattia Costamagna at the workshop focused on case studies in which the Life Cycle Assessment methodology was used to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with the use of Metal Hydride technology. In fact, this technology represents an interesting and promising solution that can be used for the compression and storage of hydrogen.

The HyCARE article on ” Substitutional effects in TiFe for hydrogen storage: a comprehensive review” has been quoted ad the most read article in Materials Advances. Our HyCARE researchers are committed to open science and are doing their best to share the research result with all the scientific community. Our ambition is to contribute in growing research on metal alloys as a sustainable option for hydrogen storage.

Download the article at this link.

See the full collection of Material Advances at rsc.li/materials-advances

HyCARE’s researcher Erika De Matteis presented her research on “TiFe- substituted intermetallic for large-scale stationary hydrogen storage at the international conference “New Times – New Trends in Materials Science and Engineering 1st International Virtual Conference“. This virtual meeting aimed at providing a forum on new trends on materials science and engineering from the Italian community and beyond. The scope was to gather engineers, physicists, chemists and materials scientists working on innovative materials and their applications.

Dr. De Matteis has presented her HyCARE’s research activities on the optimal alloy composition for the HyCARE system. Her presentation on “Fundamental hydrogen storage properties of TiFe-alloy with partial substitution of Fe by Ti and Mn” provided an overview of the main results of the experimental activities conducted in collaboration with CNRS and HEREON.

For more information, please visit the Hydrogen Technologies Congress website at this link.

The HyCARE project is producing three technology innovations with exploitation potential. The three innovations are:

• Design of metal hydride pellets and manufacture procedure for hydrogen storage (by GKN GmbH, ENGIE and Stühff GmbH)
• Design of an innovative tank for hydrogen storage using metal hydride as hydrogen carrier (by Hereon and Stühff GmbH)
• Heat recovery system to use the heat produced in the absortion of H2 during its subsequent desorption ( by Fondazione Bruno Kessler and Tecnodelta SpA)

To find out more information, please visit the EU Innovation Radar.

The scientific paper “Fundamental hydrogen storage properties of TiFe-alloy with partial substitution of Fe by Ti and Mn” has been published on the Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 159925. The paper investigates the thermodynamic changes induced by the variation of Ti content along the homogeneity range of the TiFe phase (Ti:Fe ratio from 1:1 to 1:0.9) and of the substitution of Mn for Fe between 0 and 5 at.%. The results show dependence of hydrogen storage properties as a function of over an extended Ti and Mn compositional range.

The results derives from the research performed by HyCARE researchers Dematteis, Dreistadt, Capurso, Jepsen, Cuevas, and Latroche to define the optimal alloy composition for the HyCARE hydrogen storage system.