Many fuel cells require fuels that are not currently in widespread general use, such as hydrogen or methanol. Development of the technologies needed to safely store and transport these fuels, whether as a gas, liquid, in the form of metal hydrides, sodium Borohydrides or even using nanotechnology, is considered to be just as vital to the development of the hydrogen economy as the development of technologies to produce and use hydrogen.
Hydrogen as a gas can be considered an ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect’ gas. This means that the pressure and volume of hydrogen gas is solely dependent on the number of molecules of hydrogen present and the absolute temperature of the gas. Other gaseous fuels such as LPG are not ‘perfect’ gases and will therefore liquefy under pressure. This is the problem at the heart of storing hydrogen at useful energy densities (i.e. equivalent to current liquid hydrocarbon fuels). |
