Monday's post mentioned the Open Source Green Vehicle that allows any form of energy storage to be used. And storage is one of the big challenges for using renewable energy in transport. Hydrogen has been proposed as a storage medium to replace batteries, but the problem is how to stuff enough of the gas into a conveniently sized space in a car.
You can compress it, but that carries risks. Another way is to use some material to increase the surface area to which hydrogen molecules can cling. Nanotubes could do it, but they are too expensive. Along comes Richard Wool, a chemical engineer at the University of Delaware, who thinks he can do the job with chicken feathers.
The fibres in feathers are almost entirely composed of keratin, a protein also found in hair and nails. When heated in the absence of oxygen (a process called pyrolysis), keratin forms hollow tubular structures six millionths of a metre across and riddled with microscopic pores, much like carbon nanotubes.
The researchers have some way to go to make this a practical solution, but they think they can increase the feathers' porosity to develop a practical hydrogen system that costs $4 per kilowatt hour stored and less than $700 for installing it - meeting a target set by America’s Department of Energy.
[Thanks, Paul]
Comments