Hydrogen storage systems that enable greater than 300-mile driving range, are critical to the success of the hydrogen economy and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. At the present time, there is no known hydrogen storage technology that meets all the challenging performance requirements to make hydrogen-powered automobiles competitive with conventional vehicles. Breakthrough and innovative new ideas are needed to meet the system gravimetric and volumetric capacities, fill and discharge rates, and cost targets.

To address this critical need, The Department of Energy issued a "GRAND CHALLENGE" to the scientific community in 2003 to solicit applications for research and development of hydrogen storage materials and technologies. The results of this Grand Challenge form the USDOE National Hydrogen Storage Project, to be launched in October 2004 (Fiscal Year 2005), with approximately $150 million in DOE funding over 5 years, subject to congressional appropriations.

A summary of the National Hydrogen Storage Project will be presented, including:

« Centers of Excellence in complex metal hydrides, chemical hydrogen storage and carbon-based materials with multiple university, industry, and national lab partners, led by DOE national labs « Independent projects led by universities or industry on new materials and concepts for hydrogen storage « Cross cutting areas of testing and analysis of hydrogen storage materials and technologies

Finally, data will be presented on current DOE hydrogen storage projects and the respective technology°¦s status relative to the DOE system performance targets. For the three current materials-based approaches, advantages and disadvantages of an on-board storage system will be highlighted based upon the latest open literature data and DOE partner results.