Abstract Submitted to the NANOTUBE'02 Workshop:

The major bottleneck for commercializing fuel cell vehicles is hydrogen storage. The first publication [1] on hydrogen storage in carbon material containing single-walled carbon nanotubes estimated for purified tubes a high possible storage capacity at room temperature and ambient pressure. This initiated a tremendous research activity on nanostructured carbon materials concerning their hydrogen uptake. However, in contrast to metal hydrides, the experimental results on carbon materials scatter over several orders of magnitude with none of the experiments independently reproduced in a different laboratory. Especially at room temperature and ambient pressure a clear controversy arose [1,2], which was recently discussed in Nature [3]. The presentation will give a critical review of the recent experimental situation including latest results of our measurements. Summarizing, today's knowledge, it is getting less likely that around room temperature carbon nanostructures can store the amount of hydrogen required for automotive applications.