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Thermally coupled solid hydrogen storage and carbon capture for balancing intermittent renewable energy
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  • Published: 21 April 2026

Thermally coupled solid hydrogen storage and carbon capture for balancing intermittent renewable energy

  • Alexander R. P. Harrison  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9063-23641,2,
  • George J. Fulham  ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0005-1063-81413,
  • Haoliang Hong1 &
  • …
  • Binjian Nie  ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2831-11961 

Nature Communications , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Carbon capture and storage
  • Chemical engineering
  • Chemical hydrogen storage
  • Energy modelling

Abstract

Wind turbines provide renewable power with near-zero CO2 emissions, but struggle to achieve steady electricity supply, owing to inherent wind speed variability. Hence, clean energy carriers, such as ‘green’ hydrogen from electrolysis, are required to balance daily power output, and minimise reliance on dispatchable fossil fuels during periods of insufficient wind. Here, we present a system for integrating solid-state hydrogen storage with carbon capture via magnesium looping, using waste heat from the hydrogen storage reaction to drive the process. Incorporating magnesium looping as thermo-chemical energy storage overcomes a major limitation of solid-state hydrogen storage (poor thermal efficiency), and offsets CO2 emissions from the use of back-up gas turbine capacity. Thermal integration of the MgH2 storage improved round-trip efficiency (conversion from electricity to stored H2, and back to electricity) to  ~ 19%, comparable to liquid or gas storage, whereas MgH2 alone without heat recovery is limited to  ~ 4%. We model power supply and energy storage over five years for onshore and offshore windfarms using real-world data, finding combined hydrogen storage with magnesium looping is the only system able to meet daily electricity demand and compensate for seasonal wind capacity factor variation, while offsetting CO2 operating emissions from flexible gas deployment.

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Data availability

The MATLAB code and datasets used to generate the findings of this study have been deposited in the Code Ocean platform (https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.5706678.v3). Raw input energy demand data and wind capacity factor data were downloaded from the National Energy System Operator web portal77 and the Renewable Ninja web application61,79, respectively. The data generated in this study have been deposited in the Source Data files, included as part of the Supporting Information. Any other relevant information can be provided by the corresponding authors upon request by email (a.r.harrison@imperial.ac.uk and binjian.nie@eng.ox.ac.uk). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The MATLAB code and wind capacity factor datasets used to generate the findings of this study are available via the Code Ocean platform (https://doi.org/10.24433/CO.5706678.v3).

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded with support from an EPSRC New Investigator Award as part of the ThermHydes project (EP/Y015924/1, awarded to B.N.), and the University of Oxford Challenge Research Fund (UCSF490, awarded to B.N.). The authors would like to thank Professor Jianxin Zou and his research group for providing samples of their magnesium-based hydrogen storage material, and Professor Dermot O’Hare and Dr Roland Turnell-Ritson for providing samples of their MgO-based sorbents. Paula Mendoza-Moreno and Dr Thodoris Papalas are thanked for helpful discussions regarding hydrogen liquefaction and magnesium looping, respectively. Dr Ewa Marek is thanked for access to the TGA instrument, with Joseph Gebers and Abu Kasim providing assistance in conducting the measurements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Alexander R. P. Harrison, Haoliang Hong & Binjian Nie

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Alexander R. P. Harrison

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    George J. Fulham

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  1. Alexander R. P. Harrison
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  2. George J. Fulham
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  4. Binjian Nie
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Contributions

A.R.P.H.: Conceptualisation, investigation, analysis, visualisation, writing–original draft, writing–review and editing; G.J.F.: Data curation, investigation, analysis, writing–review and editing; H.H.: Data curation, investigation, analysis, writing–review and editing; B.N.: Funding acquisition, supervision, writing–review and editing.

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Correspondence to Alexander R. P. Harrison or Binjian Nie.

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Harrison, A.R.P., Fulham, G.J., Hong, H. et al. Thermally coupled solid hydrogen storage and carbon capture for balancing intermittent renewable energy. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72035-1

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  • Received: 29 September 2025

  • Accepted: 31 March 2026

  • Published: 21 April 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-72035-1

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