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Buckyballs Can Store Concentrated Hydrogen
Pickens brings news that researchers from Rice University have discovered that it's possible to store hydrogen inside buckyballs. Hydrogen can be an excellent power source, but it is notoriously difficult to store. The buckyballs can contain up to 8% of their weight in hydrogen, and they are strong enough to hold it at a density that rivals the center of Jupiter.
"Using a computer model, Yakobson's research team has tracked the strength of each atomic bond in a buckyball and simulated what happened to the bonds as more hydrogen atoms were packed inside. Yakobson said the model promises to be particularly useful because it is scalable, that is it can calculate exactly how much hydrogen a buckyball of any given size can hold, and it can also tell scientists how overstuffed buckyballs burst open and release their cargo."
it can also tell scientists how overstuffed buckyballs burst open and release their cargo."
Well, if these are being burst open, then it means that these have to be built AND loaded each time, and then disposed. So now, we are going to either break apart water (cool, but inefficient), or strip H from fossil fuel (efficient, but bad news for the CO2). Then we are going to build bucky balls, store the hydrogen in it (at 8% volume), sell you the buck ball, your car will magically break the balls (most likely pressure or heat), this will power either an ICE (very low efficiency) or a fuel cell/electric motor (high efficiency, but high cost due to fuel cell).
Of course, we could just take the electricity and charge a battery and then run an electic motor, all at more than double (or even triple) the efficiency and probably half to one third the costs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...but each burst buckyball is 60 carbon atoms floating around in your fuel. Aren't you right back to "hydrocarbons" if you burn this fuel, and won't the carbon poison fuel cell membranes? It's a cool trick _iff_ you can strip the carbon out efficiently before the hydrogen is used.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
An alternative to carbon-fuel which requires storing that alternative in carbon?
Once you crack those buckeyballs open to get the H out, the C has to go somewhere, right?
What am I missing, here?
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Well, this seems to be purely theoretical work about whether buckyballs *could* contain dense hydrogen, not how to achieve it. However, I can think of two very interesting possibilities, energy-wise, if it could be achieved.
1) Superconductivity: Metallic hydrogen is a superconductor. Not sure how that would work conducting current through the shells, though. While just being a superconductor doesn't give you energy, it makes it easier to transmit energy.
2) Fusion is all about the combination of the density of your targets and energy of your collisions. This is some impressive hydrogen density being discussed.
That was either the start of something bad or the end of something stupid.