[buckminsterfullerene]

anyone has any bright ideas on how to store hydrogen effectively, efficiently and with out a huge cost??

i have been looking at palladium as a metal hydride but its very expensive, tanks but they are hard to work with considering that i am a high school student and would be making the hydrogen from the electrolysis of water, and need it stored under pressure.  i have also been looking at liquid but now that is really hard to do, and kind of dangerous.  right now i am left with nano-tubes, but would like to hear other ideas.

the way nano-tubes works is by keeping the hydrogen within the buckminsterfullerene structures such that there would not be any repulsion between the hydrogen, allowing for more hydrogen to be stored, but i really do not understand the process 100%, so if you know about this it would be of great help...

thank you
-daniel garcia

[P-man]

Well the researchers who found it fell accross the idea when a particular form of carbon started saocking up the hydrogen. The carpon that is used is a specific type (which I do not remember) and maybe hard to obtain. However, I may not be the best person to be answering this post.

[Mitch]

You could always store it in a balloon for a short amount of time.

[constant thinker]

As long as it's only for a short amount of time. I could imagine the H escaping pretty fast.

[joeflsts]

I just can't help myself..

I find it stores quite well in water!   

Joe

[Bakegaku]

Well the researchers who found it fell accross the idea when a particular form of carbon started saocking up the hydrogen. The carpon that is used is a specific type (which I do not remember) and maybe hard to obtain. However, I may not be the best person to be answering this post.

I think the kind of carbon you're thinking about is buckministerfullerene. 

I think I heard once that nickel may be used in a similar way to palladium, but you'd have to look into this yourself.  I'm not completely sure 

[billnotgatez]

I hesitate to post this site since these people are fighting the government in court. There is no way I can verify that anything they posted is operational. But, they have posted stuff about metal hydrides. I doubt they are using palladium. The site makes for an interesting read. I am just not sure if they are reliable.

http://www.switch2hydrogen.com

[P-man]

From the picture it looks like it's just under pressure.

[billnotgatez]

http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2new.htm

From the diagram of the “Smart Tank”, it is filled with metal hydride. Again I doubt that it is palladium, but they do not say.

[P-man]

450 miles per fill! Holy crap why aren't we hearing more about this?

[billnotgatez]

They may be in jail. The last post I can detect is 5 November 2005.
Does anyone take a person seriously if they appear on the radio with Art Bell?
These guys are operating on the fringe and may not be taken seriously, if they are truly on up and up.

Having said that there are other issues that may be at play.
For instance, they admit to things like embattlement, which could be seen as an obstacle.
If it takes you 50 years for payback from such a system will people buy it?
Doing on a small scale does not imply it can be ramped up for mass production.

This list as to why not could go on and on.

[Yggdrasil]

There are various problems associated with storage of hydrogen in a solid form as metal hydrides.  While it does solve the problem of a low energy content per unit volume, it does not have a sufficiently low energy content per unit mass.  Therefore, to carry enough fuel to travel 300 miles on a single tank (US Department of Energy's current goal) would involve carrying around a lot of extra weight which could decrease the efficiency of the vehicles so that they're no longer advantageous over gas powered vehicles (such as the already highly efficient gas-electric hybrids).  Furthermore, recharging the hydrides is difficult and takes long times, which means that it may not provide the quick refueling ability which consumers have come to expect.  Many also cannot release hydrogen quickly enough to be practical for automobiles.

[billnotgatez]

Yggdrasil

I tend to concur with what you say but the research goes on and I think it is a good area for citizen scientist to pursue. I would not necessarily restrict myself to studying hydrides.


It is plausible that one could pull up to the fuel station and exchange spent stuff for refurbished stuff in much the same way we exchange the gas grill propane tanks today.

It is also plausible that families own 2 vehicles. One for commute and one for longer distances. When the costs of the current fuel paradigm become great enough the benefits of other systems will take over.

[Yggdrasil]

Of course.  My post was not meant to say that researching solid-state hydrogen storage is a bad idea.  Many think that solid-state hydrogen storage will be the ultimate solution to the hydrogen-storage problem.  My post was to merely point out various problems which researchers must overcome before engineers can employ the technology in a commercially viable vehicle.

[constant thinker]

As soon as someone manages to get that 300 mile mark (at least in the U.S.) the government should mandate that in like 3-5 years that all gas stations have a hydrogen pump or a tank exchange depending on what is more feasible. Then people have to stop their crying and more nuclear power plants have to be built. I personally think until fusion power delivers we need more nuclear power plants to cut down on CO₂ and create cheap energy. Nuclear power seams to have come a long way and looks like a pretty mature technology.

Maybe someone could put the Pu and U that are in nuclear weapons into a reactor and use our previous weapons of mass destruction as mass power.