Latest Hydride Stories

Hydrogen would command a key role in future renewable energy technologies, experts agree, if a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it can be developed. An important step towards this elusive goal has been taken by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley. The team has discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst that can effectively generate...

Physicists have long wondered whether hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, could be transformed into a metal and possibly even a superconductor"”the elusive state in which electrons can flow without resistance. They have speculated that under certain pressure and temperature conditions hydrogen could be squeezed into a metal and possibly even a superconductor, but proving it experimentally has been difficult. High-pressure researchers, including Carnegie's Ho-kwang (Dave)...

Study suggests strategies for converting hydrogen to metal at significantly lower pressuresScientists have a long and unsuccessful history of attempting to convert hydrogen to a metal by squeezing it under incredibly high and steady pressures.Metallic hydrogen is predicted to be a high-temperature superconductor. A superconductor is a state of matter where electrons, and thus electricity, can flow indefinitely and without resistance.In a paper published this week in the online edition of the...

Economical hydrogen-based vehicles could result from rechargeable "˜chemical fuel tank'A new method for "recycling" hydrogen-containing fuel materials could open the door to economically viable hydrogen-based vehicles.In an article appearing today in Angewandte Chemie, Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Alabama researchers working within the U.S. Department of Energy's Chemical Hydrogen Storage Center of Excellence describe a significant advance in hydrogen storage...

 Nanoparticles combining platinum and gold act as superefficient catalysts, but chemists have struggled to create them in an industrially useful form. Rice University chemists have answered the call this week with a polymer-coated version of gold-platinum nanorods, the first catalysts of their kind that can be used in the organic solvents favored by chemical and drug manufacturers.The research is available online in the Sept. 1 issue of the German scientific journal Angewandte Chemie...

 To use hydrogen as a clean energy source, some engineers want to pack hydrogen into a larger molecule, rather than compressing the gas into a tank. A gas flows easily out of a tank, but getting hydrogen out of a molecule requires a catalyst. Now, researchers reveal new details about one such catalyst. The results are a step toward designing catalysts for use in hydrogen energy applications such as fuel cells.Scientists from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National...

Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, is normally an insulating gas, but at high pressures it may turn into a superconductor. Now, scientists at the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., US, have discovered a hydrogen-based compound that could be helpful in the search for metallic and superconducting forms of hydrogen. The results are reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the August 3rd issue of APS's on-line journal Physics (physics.aps.org).Hydrogen is the...

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory have created a reversible route to generate aluminum hydride, a high capacity hydrogen storage material. This achievement is not only expected to accelerate the development of a whole class of storage materials, but also has far reaching applications in areas spanning energy technology and synthetic chemistry."We believe our research has provided a feasible route to regenerate aluminum hydride, a high...

Scientists in Delaware say they have developed a new hydrogen storage method "” carbonized chicken feather fibers "” that can hold vast amounts of hydrogen, a promising but difficult to corral fuel source, and do it at a far lower cost than other hydrogen storage systems under consideration.The research, presented here today at the 13th Annual Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, could eventually help overcome some of the hurdles to using hydrogen fuel in cars, trucks and other...

By creating a model of the active site found in a naturally occurring enzyme, chemists at the University of Illinois have described a catalyst that acts like nature's most pervasive hydrogen processor.The researchers describe their work in a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and posted on the journal's Web site.Scientists have long been puzzled by nature's ability to use cheap and plentiful building blocks "“ iron, nickel and sulfur "“ to...