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Hydrogen Fuel Balls from a Gas Pump?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the quite-a-racket dept.

navalynt writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. From the article 'The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow center containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.' They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as gasoline."

1 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Not being a chemist by localman · · Score: 5, Informative

    I didn't understand what the palladium was for. But from the Wikipedia entry:

    Pallaium has the uncommon ability to absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen at room temperatures.

    The page includes lost of other tidbits, too. I had no idea it was such a useful metal.

    Cheers.