NEED a cheap way to store hydrogen? Put chicken feathers in your tank. The unlikely material may one day compete with more high-tech solutions such as carbon nanotubes for storing hydrogen for fuel-cell-powered vehicles.
Hydrogen is difficult to store safely in a tank because it is potentially explosive. So researchers are looking for materials that can stabilise hydrogen by weakly bonding with it. team at the University of Delaware in Newark heated chicken feather fibres to 400 掳C without burning. The process resulted in stable, porous carbonised fibres. When cooled to -266 掳C, the material could store almost 2 per cent of its weight in hydrogen 鈥� almost as much as carbon nanotubes. While still shy of the US Department of Energy鈥檚 target of 6.5 per cent, the feathers鈥� abundance and price hold promise: chicken feathers are a huge waste problem in Delaware.
鈥淵ou can afford carbon nanotubes if you want to go to the moon, but if you just want to go to the grocery store, you need something cheaper,鈥� says Wool, who presented the results last week at the at the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi.
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