FAQs

The DU hydride compounds can chemically store hydrogen at twice the density of liquid hydrogen. The volumetric density of hydrogen (H₂) in uranium metal hydride (UH₃) is N_H (10²² atom.cm^-3) compared to 4 N_Hfor liquid hydrogen stored at 20 Kelvin.
DU can also quickly give-up the stored hydrogen simply by heating it, which makes it suitable for a reversible hydrogen storage technology.
As a hydrogen storage medium DU is very scalable. The commercial practicalities of the bed design will be explored during the Phase 2 Demonstration to optimise the design for manufacturing, transportation, operation and decommissioning.
As a commercial application, HyDUS will use stocks of depleted UF6 Tails which is produced as a by-product of the uranium enrichment services of URENCO in the UK. This would need to be converted to DU for the commercial deployment of HyDUS.

The objective of the BEIS funded demonstration project is to prove and calibrate the round-trip efficiency: taking electricity to generate hydrogen through a standard commercially available electrolyser; store the hydrogen in the HyDUS beds; and to then release the stored hydrogen to feed a commercial fuel-cell to generate electricity.
The demonstrator will also optimise the overall system design (pipes, instrumentation, pumps, heat integration), that will in turn contribute to improving round trip efficiency.
Estimates from the Phase 1 Feasibility Study of the HyDUS project indicate that the electricity-to-electricity round-trip efficiency of the solution is competitive with the efficiency of a gas engine peaking plant, and that with design optimisation from the Phase 2 Demonstration this could see a two-fold improvement. The way in which these characteristics create commercial value will be developed and assessed for the demonstrator design.
In addition, key opportunities that the HyDUS project intends to demonstrate include:

– Stable storage with no volume degradation over time at ambient conditions;

– Technology deployable at a range of suitable locations;

– Compact storage due to large volumetric energy density of DU metal hydride; and

– High purity hydrogen output at 99.999% H₂ content.

For the hydride to decompose and hydrogen to be given-off, the temperature in the bed is raised from ambient to 400 – 450°C.
When this temperature range is reached, the pressure of the system is expected to be in the range of 0.5 – 2 bar.