Zhou lands $1.2M grant to improve devices for storing hydrogen power

Image: College of Science

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $1.2 million to Hongcai Joe Zhou, a professor of chemistry at Texas A&M University, to develop new low-cost, high-capacity storage devices to serve hydrogen-powered vehicles.

In collaboration with the Argonne National Laboratory, Zhou and his group will attempt to create a device that exceed the “Chahine rule,” or the expected hydrogen adsorption per unit of surface area.

The grant comes from the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which recently awarded a total of $4.6 million among four projects, including Zhou’s. The funded projects are working on advanced storage materials to lengthen the driving range for hydrogen-powered vehicles and to make the systems more competitive.

A member of Texas A&M’s faculty since 2008, Zhou became a Davidson Professor of Science in 2014.

Zhou has earned six Department of Energy grants, each in excess of $1 million, including two in the past five year. During the past three years, he has secured more than $8 million in external research funding from the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.