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FuturePundit points us to an article by The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory about a possible solution to the problem of Hydrogen storage. As you know if you've learned anything about chemistry, Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in existence - 1 atom. Therefore, it's quite difficult to store in any sort of container, since there is always the ability for it to escape through openings more than 1 atom wide. They say that they may have found a decent storage medium, nanoscale silica.
However, there are several other problems with Hydrogen fuel cells. One major problem so far is that they need platinum as a catalyst for the reaction that creates energy from the Hydrogen. A single hydrogen fuel cell requires 20 grams of platinum. If the cells are mass-produced, it may be possible to get the platinum requirement down to 10 grams per cell. The world has 7.7 billion grams of proven platinum reserves. There are approximately 700 million internal combustion engines on the road. Ten grams of platinum per fuel cell x 700 million fuel cells = 7 billion
grams of platinum, or practically every gram of platinum in the earth.
Unfortunately, as a recent article in EV World points out, the average fuel cell lasts only 200 hours. Two hundred hours translates into just 12,000 miles, or about one year’s worth of driving at 60 miles per hour. This means all 700 million fuel cells (with 10 grams of platinum in each one) would have to be replaced every single year.
Thus replacing the 700 million oil-powered vehicles on the road with fuel cell-powered vehicles, for only 1 year, would require us to mine every single ounce of platinum currently in the earth and divert all of it for fuel cell construction only. If we don't solve that problem, it doesn't really matter how well we can store Hydrogen, because it'll be useless. Also, there are fuel cells made from plastic, but if you don't see the problem with that, perhaps you should go figure out what plastic is made of.
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