Today’s Solutions: November 22, 2024

While hydrogen fuel cells have a huge potential to shift our transportation industry towards a cleaner future, one of the main reasons why the technology hasn’t yet reached scale is because hydrogen is incredibly volatile and challenging to store and transport.

In a bid to overcome this obstacle, a research team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials (IFAM) in Dresden, Germany, has figured out a way to turn the gas into a paste that’s easy to use as a fuel.

Called POWERPASTE, the invention provides a secure way of storing hydrogen in chemical form, rendering it safe for transportation. The hydrogen paste is based on magnesium hydride, which can be kept at atmospheric pressure and room temperature as well as released on-demand, making it more convenient to use.

Additionally, the paste only begins to decompose at 250C, meaning that the storage container would be able to withstand high outdoor temperature without any risk. What’s more, magnesium is one of the most abundant elements in Earth’s crust, so it’s a readily available raw material.

According to Dr. Marcus Vogt, a research associate at Fraunhofer IFAM, POWERPASTE can also be praised for its impressive energy storage properties which would increase a vehicle’s range significantly:

“POWERPASTE thus has a huge energy storage density. It is substantially higher than that of a 700 bar high-pressure tank. This means that POWERPASTE offers a range comparable to – or even greater than – gasoline. And it also provides a higher range than compressed hydrogen at a pressure of 700 bar. And compared to batteries, it has ten times the energy storage density.”

The first pilot factory to produce the hydrogen paste is expected to start operating this year, projected to produce four tons of viscous energy per year.

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

Changemakers of the week: GRuB and SparkNJ

Every day on the Optimist Daily, we report on solutions from around the world. Though we love solutions big and small, the ones that ...

Read More

The giant beneath the waves: world’s largest coral found in the Pacific

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a world where bad news about the environment routinely outweighs good news, scientists have discovered an incredible ...

Read More

Tortoise discovered in a home in Pompeii

Almost 2000 years after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and its trapping of the city of Pompeii in time, archaeologists are still making discoveries ...

Read More

Revel at the most detailed image of our universe yet

Here at The Optimist Daily, we have been sharing every exciting step of the James Webb Telescope’s journey, from its long-awaited launch, to when ...

Read More