Could chicken feathers hold the key to effective hydrogen storage?
It's no secret that a ton of problems need to be overcome before there's any real chance we'll all be driving clean-emissions hydrogen-powered cars and trucks. One such problem is how to store the hydrogen, which is a much less energy-dense fuel than gasoline. Researchers at the University of Delaware believe they may have found a possible solution from an extremely unlikely source: chicken feathers.
It seems that chicken feathers take on a unique set of properties when carbonized (slowly heated to 400-degrees Fahrenheit) that makes them dense and highly porous. When packed into a storage tank, these carbonized chicken feathers can greatly increase the amount of hydrogen that can be crammed inside.
Currently, researchers can store enough hydrogen in the carbonized feathers to provide an 80-mile range from a 20-gallon storage tank, but they're working to improve that figure. Fortunately, there's no shortage of available feathers – the U.S. poultry industry reportedly disposes of 2 billion pounds of chicken feathers per year.
[Source: Green Car Advisor]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
win39 12:36PM (6/26/2009)
"Currently, researchers can store enough hydrogen in the carbonized feathers to provide an 80-mile range from a 20-gallon storage tank..."
Who knew? Gee, hydrogen fuel is the big mystery miracle hype that occasionally drops out a little gem that makes you wonder about the motivation of proponents. I am sure that 80 mile range is under optimum conditions like EPA highway mileage. The range of an average car is about 450 miles on a tankful with maybe a 14 or 15 gallon refill. Perhaps if you take equivalent performance into account maybe a 7 or 8 gallon refill. To get close to that a hydrogen car would need a tank or about 120 gallons? How big is that now? Oh year, about 16 cubic feet, bigger than most medium sized car trunks. And pressurized too. How thick would the walls have to be? How heavy would the tank be? 300 pounds? 500? And I thought infra structure and the energy cost of electrolysis were the only serious problems. Wonder how big the tank was before the chicken feathers.
Reply
Snoopy 6:42PM (6/26/2009)
Suddenly I've got some serious hydrogen range anxiety. I wonder what Jeremy Clarkson would have to say about this.
Cdub 12:36PM (6/26/2009)
80 miles?? HAHAHAHAHAAHHAHA - Geez. I can't understand hydrogen people.
Reply
paulwesterberg 12:45PM (6/26/2009)
The fcx clarity gets around 300 miles per tank with 4.1 kg @ 5000psi.
And it takes loads of electricity to compress the gas. That's led to criticism that although hydrogen doesn't create CO2 or particulate pollutants in its direct use as a fuel, enough is created in the manufacturing and compression parts of the "well-to-wheel" life cycle to make hydrogen as dirty as gasoline.
nixon 1:26PM (6/26/2009)
Paul W -- Here is some food for thought. I wonder how far a car running on compressed air would go on if the same amount of electricity were used to fill an air tank with just regular air. I've seen air-cars on ABG before, but I don't know how much energy it takes per mile to compress the air to run an air car.
It would be interesting to see if compressing the H2, and then having the fuel cell convert it to electricity is much more efficient than just using the energy stored during the compression to drive a vehicle...
paulwesterberg 12:42PM (6/26/2009)
Senoz figures that at the state of the art today it would take a 75 gallon tank stuffed with 300 kilograms of carbonized chicken feathers to hold 300 miles worth of hydrogen - about 4.5 kilograms of the gas. That means the feather material stores 1.5 percent of its weight.
The goal now, Senoz said,i s to get the storage ratio up to 6 percent, so that 300 miles figure out how to make the carbonized feathers even more porous so that it would take only 75 pounds to hold 4.5 kilos of hydrogen.
So they only need to improve this process 400%, they don't say how much they are compressing the hydrogen or how much energy it takes to fill the tank.
Reply
ShaunneyCakes 12:44PM (6/26/2009)
@Cdub
Snobby environmentalists like you are what is making this transition so slow. Hydrogen is not perfect, but if someone thinks they can perfect it, why mock them? Electric cars have taken YEARS to get to where they are, and Hydrogen will take years as well. I prefer EV's but am astonded by how rude the posters are on Autobloggreen about a technology that has potential, even if that potential is 30 years away.
Reply
paulwesterberg 1:00PM (6/26/2009)
Fundamental problems due to the scientific properties of hydrogen is they reason why a transition to using it as a transportation fuel has not happened. If hydrogen was cheap and efficient we would be using it already.
Environmentalists may be a little dismissive of hydrogen "technology" because the people who often advocate for the technology ignore or fail to understand its basic scientific properties and the laws of physics and are often paid industry shills.
cdub 1:40PM (6/26/2009)
snobby? umm...ok...
Hydrogen has been "30 years away" for the past 30 years.
Electric cars are available NOW. Viable plugins will be available in 1-2 years costing under $60k - unlike Hydrogen cars which cost $600k.
I predict that EVs are going to take off like crazy once the Tesla model S comes out.
The Prius wasn't that popular until all the celeb's started driving them.
Celebs are going to eat up the Tesla model S like crazy.
DasBoese 3:55PM (6/26/2009)
Nothing new here, hydrogen storage in various porous materials has been studied extensively, yet nothing ever comes of it. Either they still require high pressure, or you need to heat them to several hundred degrees to release the gas. And all of them add weight.
Of course, it doesn't really matter because of the more basic efficiency problems of hydrogen production and fuel cells. Even if HFCVs could be produced at prices comparable to regular cars, they just can't compete with EVs and biofuel-capable hybrids in the long run.
Reply
srue 2:07PM (6/26/2009)
Chicken feathers? Am I going to have to hunt around for vegan cars in the future? I prefer as few animal products in my car as possible, even if it's impossible to completely eliminate them.
Reply
jake 2:21PM (6/26/2009)
It might help volumetric density, still one of the biggest problems with hydrogen cars (this has something to do with the cylindrical shape of most hydrogen tanks too, something batteries don't share). 80 miles still isn't good enough though, unless it allows for more flexible tank shapes. I wonder how far 10k psi gets for 20 gallons vs this type of technology.
Reply
Snowdog 3:01PM (6/26/2009)
So You can more Hydrogen in a tank filled with cooked chicken feathers, than in an empty tank?
Reply
Chris M 3:51PM (6/26/2009)
They are using the wrong species.
H2 research has always done better with feathers from equines.
Reply
Nixon 5:24PM (6/26/2009)
Heard this guy talk on NPR today. He's really just trying to find ways to use chicken feathers. He talked about Chicken Feather Composite materials. Chicken feather based interior materials for cars, etc.
He's trying to make tons of chicken feathers that right now are a valueless waste material that are hard for poultry processors to dispose of, and make them into a valuable commodity that could be sold for a profit as raw materials. While I applaud his efforts to make chicken feathers into a recycleable product instead of having them go into the waste stream, I'm afraid this idea most likely isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
I'm suspicious whenever someone starts from the side of saying "I've got a whole bunch of XXXX, how can I make it into something profitable"... It's a product chasing a use.
Reply
Posterboy 10:01PM (6/26/2009)
Once again, I can't resist... I'd bet that if you substituted chicken feathers with chicken sh!t and used the methane produced by the manure, you could go a lot further than 80 miles on a tank. I bet it would be cheaper than a hydrogen car too.
Even better... I just found a couple of links! Enjoy!
http://www.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/batesmethane.htm
and
http://www.truehealth.org/methane.html
Reply
Chris 12:22AM (6/27/2009)
Uh oh, the battery fanboys have come out in record numbers to make fun of the 80 mile range of their test hydrogen vehicle. Let me ask, how many electric cars are out there that reach highway speeds that get 80 miles to a charge? What's that? None?
Reply
Snowdog 8:35AM (6/27/2009)
You haven't heard of the Tesla Roadster? Living under a rock have you?
Now how many different models of Fuel Cell Vehicles can you buy???
Zero.
Alan 10:11AM (6/27/2009)
What an amazing comment! I think it's the hydrogen fanboys you want to be looking out for now, everyone else was has just realised what's going to work and what isn't!
Chris M 5:14PM (7/02/2009)
Right, it IS none. Freeway speed EVs can go a lot further on a single charge. The ones that do less than 80 miles are NEVs that are not capable of freeway speeds.