A team at the Denmark Technical University has figured out a way of storing hydrogen in pellet form. I’m not a chemist in real life, nor do I play one on tv, but it involves ammonia, sea salt and some powerful juju known only to the Guild of Secretive Chemical Shamans, Local 432. Apparently, hydrogen is released when the ammonia is released from the pellet. The beauty of this is that the pellet is reusable, just have your local shaman fill it full of ammonia again.
Here’s a quote that fills me with happiness and joy:
“Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.
They’ve started a company called Amminex to develop commercial use of this technology. If all goes well, we could very well see the first practical and safe hydrogen-powered cars on the market within a decade. That would be some powerful juju.
One detail that is not mentioned here is this salt compound will need to be heated to a temp of 370C or roughly 700F before the ammonia (not hydrogen) is released.
Another less heat/energy intensive solid storage solution for ammonia is guanidine. Apparently guanidine requires mixture with water at 100C to release ammonia.
Read more here:
http://sustainableoregon.org/documents/climate/comment-Oregon_Sustainable_Energy.pdf
Got the above info from the comment thread here:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/09/handheld_hydrog.html