Two potential signatures of life on Saturn’s moon Titan have been found by the Cassini spacecraft. But scientists are quick to point out that non-biological chemical reactions could also be behind the observations.
We jumped inside a Mercedes F800 last week – the car that will offer three flavours of fuel as soon as 2012. Mercedes says that the future is a three-lane highway, with cars running on petrol, electricity and hydrogen.
Chemical engineers working at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a hydrogen fuel cell that measures only 3 millimeters across. That could mean longer lasting, eco-friendly power for your gadgets.
The original Horizon H-Racer hydrogen fuel-cell toy just got an update: Before, you could fill it with water and let ‘er rip. Now, you can actually steer the bastard.
We’ve talked a lot about hydrogen and fuel cells here on Giz, mainly because it’s the wonder fuel of the near future, but storing dangerous H2 is tricky: something a team at the University of Crete thinks it’s solved. The US Department of Energy reckons a tank should store 6% H2 by mass, and current tech can only do about 2%. The Greek team’s tank is amazing: it’s constructed of two wondermaterials. Carbon Buckytubes connect layers of graphene to make a huge matrix—so far they’ve built a tank with Buckyballs instead of tubes, but they’ll have that finished by Christmas. And theoretically it can store 6.1% H2. [NewScientist]
Scientists at Korea’s S&P Energy Research Institute have worked out a way of manufacturing hydrogen that’s 20-30 times cheaper than current methods. Typical electrolysis methods in use take about 4 to 4.5 kWh of energy for each cubic meter of H2 gas but the new Korean method (apparently a chemical process) takes just 0.1 kWh, with associated production cost savings. Why should you care about this? Because as a component of some fuel cell technology, hydrogen might become one of the fuels of the future, and a lowering of its manufacturing costs seems like a fantastic way to help usher-in an era of hydrogen-powered gadgets. [Newswire]
I’m all for hydrogen–or any alternative fuel source for that matter (Shai Agassi, my man, let’s get cooking already!)–but if you’re going to heavily promote your cross-country trek as the “first ever” for hydrogen-powered vehicles, at least make sure large, 1,000-mile stretches of it did not involve having the vehicles carried along on flatbed trucks. This was the case today as the “Hydrogen Road Tour ’08″ wrapped up in Los Angeles after its 60-strong vehicle fleet entered the Los Angeles Coliseum. From Rolla, Missouri, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the caravan was carried on the back of carbon-belching flat bed tractor trailer trucks. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of an alternative fuel road trip right then and there?
Australian researchers have developed a new fuel cell prototype that could lead to much cheaper, more efficient fuel cell vehicles in the near future. Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne created a new cathode that could bypass the need for expensive platinum nanoparticles, which adds about US$3500 to US$4000 to the sticker price of current fuel cells.
If you think hydrogen cars are the future, you are wrong. They are the past. You just have to look at this amazing video with Jack Nicholson showing his hydrogen Chevy, smashing the traditional car industry with his usual finesse, and extolling its virtues on network television, 30 years ago:
