18 Aug MAST3RBOST PROJECT: IMPROVEMENTS OF HYDROGEN STORAGE FOR EUROPEAN VEHICLE DECARBONIZATION

MAST3RBoost is a new EU-funded Horizon Europe project presented by Contactica.

MAST3RBoost, Maturing the Production Standards of Ultraporous Structures for High Density Hydrogen Storage Bank Operating on Swinging Temperatures and Low Compression, is a European project which aims to provide a solid benchmark of cold-adsorbed H₂ storage (CAH₂) at low compression (100 bar or below) by maturation of a new generation of ultraporous materials (Activated carbons, ACs, and Metal Organic Frameworks, MOFs) for mobility applications, i.e., H₂-powered vehicles, including road and railway, air-borne and water-borne transportation.

Mast3RBoost will help to achieve better, more sustainable and more efficient ways to storage H₂ in order to raise the penetration of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) and to contribute to a low carbon economy in Europe. This decarbonization of Europe’s economy is key for an energy transition, and advances on hydrogen storage can help boost it, as commercial vehicles – such as trucks, buses, ships, trains or large cars – are known to be early adopters of this kind of technology improvements.

This is promising news, since the transportation segment makes up about one third of all CO₂ emissions in the European Union (> 1,000 MILL ton). However, state-of-the-art technology for H2 storage on-board, based on compression at 700bar, is still disappointing in terms of volumetric density (25 gH2/lsys), preventing a widespread penetration of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles. The market-entry objective is to fit 5kg H2 in a gasoline equivalent tank (80 kg/90 l), so the goal of Mast3RBoost project is to achieve a 30% increase of the working capacity of H₂ at 100bar to bring significant advances on Hydrogen storage banks.

This will be achieved through a new generation of Machine Learning-improved ultraporous materials – Activated Carbons and Metal Organic Frameworks – to meet the industry goals by the development of the first worldwide adsorption-based demonstrator at the kg-scale. To manufacture these ultraporous materials, recycled raw materials will be pursued, from waste agroforestry biomass and solid urban waste and, in order to minimise overall environmental impacts as well as improve economic performance of the hydrogen storage, Life Cycle thinking strategies will applied throughout all the process.

This new European Union funded initiative started on June 2022 and will last for four years. Contactica will lead two from the eight Work Packages: WP6 Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Cost and Risk Assessment; and WP7 Exploitation, Communication and Dissemination. The project is coordinated from Spain by Envirohemp and counts on a consortium formed by 13 partners from 8 different countries.

Mast3RBoost has been funded in the topic HORIZON-CL4-2021-RESILIENCE-01-17 by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). It is a Research and Innovation Action project (RIA) with a budget of 4,638,414.00€, 100% funded by the EU.

If you want more information, you can check all of Contactica’s EU funded projects.