Helping make hydrogen a staple for consumer vehicles
May 9, 2007Carnegie Mellon University's David S. Sholl is working to identify new materials that would help make hydrogen more stable and cost-efficient than fossil fuels. Increased concern about global warming and a need to conserve natural fuel sources prompted Carnegie Mellon researchers to find new, lightweight, low-cost hydrogen-storage materials.
"We are currently studying the use of metal hydrides, such as alanates and borohydrides, to find materials that could ultimately improve the efficiency of hydrogen cars and curb pollution," said Sholl, a professor of chemical engineering.
Essentially, what Sholl and his research team are trying to do is create a new material that will store larger amounts of hydrogen than can be held in a compressed gas tank, but will still be able to easily release the hydrogen to feed the fuel cell for cars of the future. Hydrogen-powered cars run on fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen from the air to produce electricity. The only waste emitted is water.
By contrast, engines that burn gasoline emit pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, that cause global warming. U.S. vehicles consume 383 million gallons of gasoline a day — or about 140 billion gallons annually. That's about two-thirds of the total national oil consumption, half of which is imported from overseas.
"Hydrogen can potentially be produced from domestic resources without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is an attractive vision for a future fuel source," said Sholl, whose research is funded by the Department of Energy and performed in collaboration with Professor Karl Johnson from the University of Pittsburgh.
Once hydrogen is produced, transporting and storing it becomes a problem. As a gas, it requires a lot of energy to compress into a volume small enough to fit into a car. Sholl said that his research has used computational methods to screen a large number of possible storage materials, leapfrogging what could have been a decade of work to test the same materials in the lab.
Sholl argues that this research will help streamline hydrogen storage, cut energy costs and ultimately help hydrogen to replace gasoline.
Source: Carnegie Mellon University
-
Energy Efficient Separations: Researchers Use Computational Modeling to Design Improved Membrane Technology
Feb 15, 2010 |
5 / 5 (4) |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Doubts about surface plasmons
Feb 11, 2012
-
excited U-236 decay time in the U235 fission chain
Feb 09, 2012
-
Polar catastrophe?
Feb 09, 2012
-
Large scale field sonication
Feb 09, 2012
-
states and energy of paired electrons in BCS
Feb 08, 2012
-
difference between longitudinal and transverse refractive indices
Feb 08, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - Atomic, Solid State, Comp. Physics
More news stories
Explained: Sigma
It's a question that arises with virtually every major new finding in science or medicine: What makes a result reliable enough to be taken seriously? The answer has to do with statistical significance -- but ...
Feb 09, 2012 |
5 / 5 (19) |
66
Quantum physicist explains $100K offer for proof scaled-up quantum computing is impossible
(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researcher Scott Aaronson has certainly riled the physics community with his offer this past Friday, of $100,000 to anyone who can prove that scaled-up quantum computing is impossible. ...
Diamond light, brighter than the sun
Its the size of five football pitches and generates light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. As the Diamond Light Source celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, Penny Bailey visits one of the ...
Feb 07, 2012 |
4.3 / 5 (7) |
18
|
Physicists 'record' magnetic breakthrough
An international team of scientists has demonstrated a revolutionary new way of magnetic recording which will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology.
Feb 07, 2012 |
4.5 / 5 (41) |
14
|
Hints of the Higgs - papers are submitted
Back in December 2011, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN presented some exciting results that provided tantalising hints of the Higgs boson.
Feb 08, 2012 |
4.1 / 5 (7) |
10
Latin America mining boom clashes with conservation
Latin America is experiencing a mining boom as prices rise fuelled by a hike in global demand, but the region is also being hit by a wave of violent protests, strikes and rallies by environmentalists.
Love a click away in Indonesia's Twitter Republic
He was a geeky kid from Yogyakarta, she a glamorous city girl in Jakarta. In a country with one of the world's most vibrant social networking scenes they fell in love on Twitter.
Walney offshore wind farm is world's biggest (for now)
(PhysOrg.com) -- The Walney wind farm on the Irish Sea--characterized by high tides, waves and windy weather--officially opened this week. The farm is treated in the press as a very big deal as the Walney ...
GPS court ruling leaves US phone tracking unclear
A US Supreme Court decision requiring a warrant to place a GPS device on the car of a criminal suspect leaves unresolved the bigger issue of police tracking using mobile phones, legal experts say.
Europeans protest controversial Internet pact
Tens of thousands of people marched in protests in more than a dozen European cities Saturday against a controversial anti-online piracy pact that critics say could curtail Internet freedom.
Europe stakes billion-dollar bet on new rocket
A pencil-slim rocket is scheduled to lift into space from South America on Monday, carrying a billion-dollar bet that Europe can grab a juicy slice of the market to place satellites in low orbit.