Coal powered cars

It would be ironic, to say the least, if fossil fuels, such as coal turned out to be the saving grace in the future hydrogen economy, in which this purportedly clean fuel powers our cars and homes through the essentially Victorian technology of fuel cells.

Nevertheless researchers at Pennsylvania State Universityhave demonstrated that coal might be the most convenient storage medium for this explosively elemental gas. More importantly, the production and storage of hydrogen take place in a two-in-one process, according these latest results due to appear in Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS, to its fiends)

Angela Lueking and colleagues at Penn State have used low-cost anthracite, milled, or ground, into fine particles in the presence of cyclohexene, to produce a molecular structure that can trap and hold hydrogen.

The process offers a novel option for the distributed production of hydrogen, for supplying a power source to fuel-cell powered cars, as it would involve production in a small-scale facility located near end-users, rather than in distant central complexes.

SOURCE: JACS, DOI: 10.1021/ja0604818. Look this paper up using our DOI tool or add the tool to your website to allow visitors to track papers through the paper’s unique ID code.