Chicken Feathers May Hold Key To Hydrogen Storage

pitterpatter writes "A researcher trying to find a use for them claims that after being heated enough to carbonize, chicken feathers hold as much hydrogen as carbon nanotubes do. So chicken feather charcoal might solve the storage problem for the new hydrogen economy. One problem down, half a zillion to go."

Comments

Re:How much more energy

[electrostatic]

Carbonization is often exothermic, which means that it could in principle be made self-sustaining... http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Carbonization

Feathers are carbohydrates, meaning they are carbon structures with hydrogen and a small portion of oxygen. The Carbonization process cooks off the hydrogen and oxygen, leaving the carbon structure. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to form H20, which is certainly exothermic. My guess is that it produces more heat energy that was consumed to bring it up to carbonization temperature in the first place.

So little or no energy is wasted -- unlike as with solar cells that take 5-10 years to generate as much energy as was used to make them.