Although hydrogen has long been considered a great potential fuel source because it can be easily converted to electricity and is carbon free, storage has always been a problem. Unlike gasoline, hydrogen can only be stored in high pressure or cryogenic tanks.
But researchers at the USC, led by Travis Williams, an assistant professor of chemistry at the school’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, may have come up with a solution.
First Williams and his team figured out a way to release hydrogen from an innocuous chemical material -- ammonia borane, a nitrogen-boron complex --that can be stored as a stable solid.
Now they’ve developed a catalyst system that releases enough hydrogen from its storage in ammonia borane to make it usable as a fuel source.
Moreover, the system is air-stable and reusable, unlike other systems for hydrogen storage on boron and metal hydrides.
“Ours is the first game in town for reusable, air-stabile ammonia borane dehydrogenation,” Williams told a university publication, adding that the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation is in the process of patenting the system.
The system is sufficiently lightweight and efficient to have potential fuel applications ranging from motor-driven cycles to small aircraft, he said.
The research was funded by the Hydrocarbon Research Foundation and the National Science Foundation. It has been published in this month’s Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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