STORING HYDROGEN:A SPINOUT company from two British universities claims it has solved the problem of storing hydrogen so it can be used safely as a renewable fuel using nanotechnology.
Until now, it has only been possible to use hydrogen as a fuel if it is stored at very high pressures or very low temperatures, both expensive.
Cella Energy, a joint spinout from Oxford University and University College London, said it has made a breakthrough by using plastic nanoparticles that are 30 times smaller than a human hair to trap hydrogen gas.
Doing so means it can be handled at room temperature, under normal atmospheric pressure and stored as easily and to the same capacity as if it was in a pressurised tank.
The microbeads are a kind of fine polymer powder, smaller than a grain of sand, and the hydrogen is captured in 50 to 200 nanometer pores within the polymer.
Encased like this, hydrogen will flow like liquid through a vehicle’s fuelling system. The beads can be safely exposed to air. When the beads are empty, they can be stored in a separate waste tank and recycled.
Cella Energy, which won the Shell Springboard Awards, says that low-cost manufacturing processes can be used to produce the hydrogen encasing substrate, such as electrospinning or spraying, depending on the required form factor. Hydrogen becomes cost-competitive once oil is over $100 a barrel. It is much less polluting than fossil fuels.
