4 Hydrogen targets
70
ultimate
volumetric capacity (g l– 1)
60
50
30
40
10
complex hydride
20
liquid hydrogen
2015
chemical hydride
compressed at 700 bar
cryocompressed
compressed at 350 bar
0
0
1
23456
gravimetric capacity (percentage weight)
7
With hydrogen set to become a fuel of the future, it is essential to be able to store
as much hydrogen in as small a volume as possible. This figure compares the
merits of compressing hydrogen gas (yellow), with cooling it under pressure in
special tanks (purple), encapsulating it in materials like buckyballs to form
“complex hydrides” (orange) and bonding it chemically to materials like
nanotubes to form “chemical hydrides” (light green). Also shown are results for
two US Department of Energy (DOE) learning demos (green) operating at different
pressures, as well as the DOE’s targets for 2015 and beyond. Source: DOE
ment, but an effective working partnership between
government, industry, academia and the wider public.
That will not be easy as nanotechnology is often a
disruptive technology – be it covering the desert with
solar cells or piping hydrogen to a new global network
of filling stations to charge up fuel cells. Companies
with the capability and resources will need commercial incentives to exploit the new technologies and
make the leap from lab to production line. But eight
years after nanotechnology was dubbed by the White
House as “the next industrial revolution”, it is now
accepted even by the sceptics that the energy industry
will reap huge benefits from the new materials and
processes that nanotechnology can bring.
Even with fossil fuels, where nanotechnology has not
yet had much impact, there is every reason to hope that
it could be used to develop, for example, new materials
to capture carbon dioxide from power plants and store
the gas underground. This and much more can be expected from nanotechnology in the years ahead, since
we have only just dipped our toe into a huge ocean of
opportunities. In the wake of the recent economic crisis, there is now a need to refocus on how best to use our
scientific and technical resources to solve the energy
problem. The solutions are truly within our grasp. ■
More about: Nanotechnology and energy
E Cartlidge 2007 Bright outlook for solar cells Physics World
July pp20–24
Department of Trade and Industry 2007 Meeting the Energy
Challenge: A White Paper on Energy (TSO, London)
Nanoforum consortium 2003 Nanotechnology Helps Solve the
World’s Energy Problems nanoforum.org
Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Physics The Future
for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology www.iop.org
B Swarup 2007 Energy storage takes off Physics World
July pp42–45
D Tolfree and A Smith 2009 Roadmapping Emergent
Technologies ( Troubador, Leicester)
