I read something similar 20-30 years ago. Then it was theory, but how is it today? The obvious advantage: getting more fuel in smaller space without chemical reactions.
You can store hydrogen in carbon nanotubes. It’s not very efficient from any perspective though.
Agreed. Can’t see an efficient application of such technology. Manufacture the nanotubes. Manufacture the hydrogen. Destroy all and reap the energy which I’d guess would be about 40% of the manufacturing energy.
Still, it could have useful applications to power micro engines for a short time. Which begs the question - what’s wrong with electrons instead?
A great many things can be encapsulated in carbon nanotubes, including room temperature ice crystals. When you are talking about hydrogen storage though, you are talking about both inside and outside the carbon nanotube. Hydrogen can be either physisorbed or chemisorbed. In the case of physisorbed hydrogen, raw carbon nanotubes are not terribly good, but chemical treatment of carbon nanotubes could change that. Raw carbon nanotubes tend to have lots of impurities not to mention the ends are capped. Oxidation followed by annealing can lead to better adsorption, but even then results are not particularly good. More than likely, doping the carbon nanotubes with nitrogen and boron will help change the electronic structure so that hydrogen adsorption is more favorable but not too favorable.
Chemisorption is not particularly useful since the activation barrier is very high. It’s usually achieved by doing a Birch reduction or electrolytically. Then getting the hydrogen to come off also takes very high temperatures. Once again, changing the electronic structure of the carbon nanotubes can lower the activation barrier. I think the ideal situation will be an adsorption that is someplace between chemisorption and physisorption.
Incidently, cabon nanotubes are barely 20 years old, so whatever you read was probably 10 to 15 years ago not 20-30.
Komolono may be better read than us! The Russians published on carbon nanotubes in the 50s.
I’ll be damned! I had no idea.
Is it realistic that the same nanotube capacitor would one day store both electricity and hydrogen?
This Science Friday broadcast had talked with the author about this Science article that featured twisting nanotube yarns to gain a wide variety of functionalities. The list included new textile batteries that could serve as elements of the car while also powering it and improved hydrogen storage as the yarns twists allowed flow and surface area for catalysis that nanotubes could not otherwise achieve.
They are separate technologies. It would be suprising if the two would coordinate efficiently. Not all nanotubes are the same. Different applications require different handling and in some cases, just plain different tubes.
Composite materials could very well be the only way to make carbon nanotube materials useful commercially.