Oct

8

Hydrogen Storage Research Gets a New and Powerful Tool

October 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Research at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science lead by Alireza Akbarzadeh has a paper published about their new method to discover materials that can store hydrogen.  The hydrogen economy is for many, the nirvana as a source to fuel human activities.

But hydrogen is the smallest element and is a devil to contain and keep, as it tends to escape most everything because it can slip through the molecules used to make storage devices.  Hydrogen isn’t hard to come up with, just expensive and requires a great deal of electricity in particular to free it from the oxygen bond when combined to make water.  So there is a lot of it around in water as in the universe, its just that on Earth its already locked into water and when freed hard to hang on to.

That’s why the news release from UCLA is so noteworthy.  See:

http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/2007/hydrogen_storage_model.htm

One of the heavily researched ways to store hydrogen is to get it deposited into other light elements where it can be pulled back out and needed.  The deposit part looks to be comparatively easy but the withdrawal isn’t so simple.  Several light elements and compounds have been identified but they all require difficult to manage and unworkable methods to make the hydrogen withdrawals.

Akbaezadeh’s team has devised an algorithm, a sort of computer program, that they say identify the phases and reaction that could prove most valuable in the ongoing research.  At first glance this would save lots of time and speed things up.

The news piece out of UCLA is brief, short and right to the point if not covering the issue in current applicability and is well worth the read.  Just keep in mind that hydrogen, as desirable as it is for a fuel source has a very long way to go to be used in our everyday lives.

I’m really quite encouraged by the connection the UCLA writer offers by quoting XX who says, “we are steadily approaching the moment when we will be able to theoretically design materials with desired properties [to store hydrogen].”

For other information about other storage ideas see the Category titled Hydrogen.


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