It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2011) — A team of USC scientists has developed a robust, efficient method of using hydrogen as a fuel source.
Hydrogen makes a great fuel because of it can easily be converted to electricity in a fuel cell and because it is carbon free. The downside of hydrogen is that, because it is a gas, it can only be stored in high pressure or cryogenic tanks.
Ammonia borane (NH3BH3) has a high hydrogen content and is stable at room temperature, but has, in the past, proven difficult to prepare in high yield. Now, Tom Autrey and co-workers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, US, have developed a new one-pot synthetic method to this solid material.1
Autrey's method requires in situ production of ammonium borohydride (NH4BH4) by the addition of NH4X and MBH4 salts (X = Cl, F, M = Na, Li) in liquid ammonia, followed by removal of the majority of the ammonia, then addition of tetrahydrofuran (THF) which causes the NH4BH4 to decompose to ammonia borane in high yield
Chen proposes the use of sodium aminoborane (NaNH2BH3) as an alternative to ammonia borane as it does not release borazine on decomposition. Traditionally sodium aminoborane is made using a mechano-synthetic route which requires additives to aid milling. But these additives cause a reduction in the hydrogen density of the product.
Chen's wet-chemical method allows pure sodium aminoborane to be made. He proposes two routes, the faster of which involves adding sodium hydride (NaH) to a solution of ammonia borane (NH3BH3) in THF. The reaction occurs within 10 minutes at -3 °C, giving solid sodium aminoborane which can be filtered off.
Originally posted by LanternOfDiogenes
reply to post by pteridine
Pteridine, you seem to know a great deal about this subject, I like the harvest fuel from our own atmosphere ingenious I wonder if this is being explored at all.
Originally posted by LanternOfDiogenes
As in electrolysis, of course, however I believe the storing of that garnered gas and the power required to grant amounts large enough to use make it relatively unfeasible at the moment if I understand it properly. as Pteridine has pointed out it is cost that is ultimately ruling this exploration of new energies. It is unfortunately true.
Originally posted by Pilgrum
reply to post by pteridine
The problem I can see with the proposal to manufacture liquid fuel from atmospheric CO2 is that it won't address the CO2 problem (if there actually is one that is) because it'll simply be getting partially recycled IE motor exhausts will still be releasing carbon compounds and abundant sources of fresh CO & CO2 will continue to operate.