Solid Hydrogen Seen as Safer
- 6:22 am |
Researchers at the University of New Brunswick have developed a method for converting hydrogen gas into a solid that can easily be converted back into a fuel on demand. The scientists are working with HSM Systems to incorporate hydrogen into a powder that would be safer to store in a vehicle than liquid or gaseous hydrogen.
Hydrogen is combined with other materials to make it inert, but that reduces its energy efficiency since most of the volume and weight will be in the form of non-energy producing materials. The researchers say the first version will store six percent hydrogen by weight, and they hope to improve it to nine percent, so vehicles would be carrying a lot weight that would be a drag on fuel efficiency.
The dream of fuel cell cars and a hydrogen highway won’t be realized until a safe way of storing hydrogen is developed that forever eliminates the inaccurate link to images of the Hindenburg. While research continues to be done on building stronger tanks for storing hydrogen under pressure, much of the attention has gone towards developing metals that can absorb and release hydrogen as needed. The most talked-about forms are metal hydrides or solid oxides, so this research is a new twist on the same idea.