Making fuel out of thin air

In a discovery that experts say could revolutionise fuel cell technology, scientists have found that graphene, the world’s thinnest, strongest and most impermeable material, can allow protons to pass through it.

The new discovery reported in the journal Nature raises the possibility that graphene membranes could one day be used to “sieve” hydrogen gas directly from the atmosphere to generate electricity.

“We are very excited about this result because it opens a whole new area of promising applications for graphene in clean energy harvesting and hydrogen-based technologies,” says study co-author Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo of Manchester University.

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very interesting

most if not all H2 would be bound??

wookiemeister said:

most if not all H2 would be bound??

They are talking Hydrogen ions – unbound atoms of hydrogen, each stripped of its electron. Very rare, but they exist.

Hydrogen will pass directly through a lot of things, including thin steel sheet.

So how much of this hydrogen stuff is there anyway? Can’t be a lot of it.

Wouldn’t it be easier to make use of other forms of energy in the environment?

Like maybe somehow converting the energy in the wind into electricity? There must be lots of that available, and it’s continually being replenished by the big fusion generator in the sky.

one part in a million by volume is what i read when i asked myself the same question and googled the answer.

I don’t like to be too negative because this is interesting and may have useful applications but:

these thin sheets of graphene are phenomenally expensive, H radicals are phenomenally rare in the atmosphere, and basically I don’t see how the cost per J of fuel from this method is going to be anywhere near the cost of existing methods for generating fuel from thin air.