Liquid Sponges Extract Hydrogen From Water

New submitter gaelfx writes: Researchers at Glasglow University have an interesting method for separating the hydrogen out of water: Liquid Sponges. Most methods of extracting the hydrogen involve some form electrolysis, but these generally require some pretty expensive materials. The researchers claim that they can accomplish this using less electricity, cheaper materials and 30 times faster to boot. With both Honda and Toyota promising hydrogen fuel cell cars in Japan within the next few years (other manufacturers must be considering it as well, if not as publicly), does this spell a new future for transportation technology?

Comments

This ignores the big problem of hydrogen, leakage

[Obscene_CNN]

This ignores the big problem of hydrogen, leakage. Currently about 10% to 20% of all hydrogen produced is lost to leakage. This has serious environmental ramifications. Hydrogen leakage will cause bigger and longer lasting holes in the ozone layer. By making hydrogen production cheaper and easier it just makes the leakage problem worse. http://www.nature.com/news/200...

Re:Nature

[fahrbot-bot]

And that's because hydrogen is chemically unstable and hard to store compared to sugars. Neither of those are good things for living creatures.

Exactly. Plants learned *that* lesson long before we did with the Hindenburg. (If you listen very carefully to the video, you can hear all the plants laughing at our naiveté in the background.)