Energy
Article 12
Nano technology: a solution for energy production and storage
Rail & Recherche n°40 - July/August/September 2006
Researchers believe that nano technology has a great future in the field of energy, with the potential to improve fuel cells, increase hydrogen production and storage capacities, improve the transmission and storage of electricity and develop new materials.
Storing the hydrogen has always been a problem with fuel cells. With the current technology, it is stored under pressure, a method that has several drawbacks, including small storage volumes and a risk of explosion. Adsorbing the gas on a surface has emerged as a promising way to increase storage capacity. This solution consists in increasing the concentration of a gas at the interface of extremely porous materials. SNCF Research and Gaz de France have done research on active carbon in the studies that were conducted for the gas-powered railcar.
Now, the rapidly growing field of nano technology is going to provide a way to develop this idea of adsorption with the extremely surface-rich structure of carbon nanotubes.
50,000 times smaller than a human hair and 100 times stronger than a cable
Only 2 forms of carbon – graphite and diamond – were known until Richard Smalley, winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1996, discovered fullerenes. Fullerenes are spheres of stable carbon that resemble a football.
They can be used to make a nanometric material (10-9 m), the cylindrical carbon nanotube.
Nanotubes are considered one of the most important materials in nano technology. They are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair and 100 times stronger than a cable. They can bend and deform without breaking, properties that make them suitable for over 60 applications in very diverse fields such as textiles, paints, high-performance concrete, and computers.
And their surface allows nanotubes to adsorb large volumes of gas. The many research projects being conducted today on energy are poised to bring important industrial uses in the near future.