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Indirect Energy Storage Devices (Fuel Cells/Hydrogen Storage)
One of the most promising and sought after technologies today is the production of electricity from the reaction of hydrogen with oxygen within a fuel cell. One of the key stumbling blocks to developing fuel cells can be summed up in one question: "How can we store the hydrogen so that it is readily accessible and is safe for consumer products such as automobiles?" In pursuit of an answer, several potential storage techniques are being explored ranging from liquid hydrogen storage tanks, on-demand chemical generation of hydrogen from boro-hydrides, and storage of hydrogen in metal matrices such as platinum and palladium. However, one very likely candidate is to use high surface area, porous materials such as Reticle Carbon. Reticle Carbon is an ideal medium/matrix in which to store hydrogen, having the colossal surface area it does and the affinity for hydrogen that it does. Assuredly, Reticle Carbon attracts elemental hydrogen and may have the ability to store absolutely immense magnitudes of hydrogen in light of its massive surface area. By virtue of its porosity, the collected volume of hydrogen will never be large enough to worry about explosions in accidents, which is the concern for liquid or high pressure hydrogen storage.
While the stored hydrogen market is still in the embryonic stage, it does pose a huge market as the technology advances. In fact, it may be one of the critical path technologies that is needed to catalyze commercial fuel cell technology. Reticle is possibly a breakthrough market for fuel cells, rendering automotive and aviation/aerospace fuel cell use much more commercially competitive. As a point of reference, President Bush recently signed legislation providing a Canadian firm millions of dollars to perform advanced research on fuel cell technology. Asahi Glass, Mitsubishi and other companies are actively pursuing this avenue, and they have contacted Reticle in pursuit of those objectives. Reticle Carbon can be tailored to have macro- and micro-porosities of any distribution. This means that a range of carbon could be made for storage of hydrogen.
The Reticle technology is assuredly sustainable. If fuel cell power sources can be commercialized, emissions are going to be dramatically reduced. The ability to store hydrogen in gaseous form means that the hydrogen can come from more disparate sources, meaning it can be piped in from more economic and more benign production sources.
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