Hydrides for Efficient Hydrogen Storage

In the face of depleting fossil fuel reserves and perilous environmental detriment caused by these fuels, mankind is forced to look for other sources of energy to satiate its energy requirement. Hydrogen fuel energy emerges as a competent supplementary source that has procured vigorous research interest. The contemporary storage modalities, namely, the gaseous and cryogenic liquid either have a propensity for cataclysmic accidents or require a technological setup that is highly sophisticated both of which stand in the way of making the hydrogen economy a viable and sustainable source for harnessing energy. Hydrogen storage in solid-state is deemed as the next big thing with regard to a more efficient, cost-effective, and safer mode of storing hydrogen. Hydride-based solid-state media, vis-à-vis, are merited as excellent repository media as a result of a long trail of research endeavors deployed towards finding promising solid-state storage media. This chapter elucidates principally about three types of metal hydrides, namely, conventional metal hydrides, binary metal hydrides, and complex metal hydrides; their physical properties; hydrogen sorption kinetics; and some of the demerits they tend to possess which lend them to further modification.