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From: donpat	9/2/2005 8:23:51 AM
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Carbon Nanotubes, the Evolution of Hydrocarbons? By Michael Johnston For the last 160 odd years we have been using carbon as a medium to store our hydrogen fuel. We called this method of H2 storage "fossil fuels". So using carbon as a device on/in which to store hydrogen is nothing new. Some other examples of "natural" hydrogen on carbon storage are alcohols, vegetable oils and sugar. The only problem with this method of hydrogen storage has been that, when the hydrogen atom is transferred from the carbon atom on which it is stored to an oxygen atom the carbon storage atom also binds to an oxygen atom creating the greenhouse gases carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide as byproducts. It is these gases which are currently contributing greatly to global warming/climate change and this is the main motivation for our push to implement cleaner energy sources. Could carbon play a role in the new energy paradigm? Many people think so and researchers are constantly working to improve one such carbon based hydrogen storage device. Carbon Nanotubes were developed as an outgrowth of the Fullerene research conducted by Nobel Laureates; Robert F. Curl, Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley. Nanotubes can be described as "Conceptually, single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can be considered to be formed by the rolling of a single layer of graphite (called a graphene layer) into a seamless cylinder. A multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) can similarly be considered to be a coaxial assembly of cylinders of SWCNTs, like a Russian doll, one within another; the separation between tubes is about equal to that between the layers in natural graphite. Hence, nanotubes are one-dimensional objects with a well-defined direction along the nanotube axis that is analogous to the in-plane directions of graphite." This according to M. S. Dresselhaus, Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unlike traditional hydrocarbon chains where hydrogen atoms are bound to specific carbon atoms. In nanotubes the hydrogen atoms are drawn to the carbon atoms which make up the tubes but do not seem to actually bond to them. This makes it much easier to both fill the nanotube assembley with hydrogen and conversely to remove the hydrogen from the nanotubes. Nanotubes are available commercially from such sources as the Thomas-Swan Company and many others. One problem with nanotube hydrogen storage has been that there hasn't been the capacity to store enough hydrogen in a given quantity of nanotube material. Researchers have recently devised a theoretical model that may solve that problem. They have discovered that by "decorating" the outside walls of nanotubes with metals like titanium the storage capacity of the tubes for hydrogen could be greatly increased. The advantage of using carbon nanotubes as a hydrogen storage medium is that the hydrogen can be put into and removed from the nanotubes without the carbon of the tubes reacting with oxygen to form the previously mentioned CO and CO2 gases. This will allow the hydrogen fuel to be produced from a clean, renewable source such as water. Using water as a source the energy to produce the hydrogen can come from such nearly unlimited resources as solar and wind energy. The hydrogen so produced could be loaded into carbon nanotube storage and distribution tanks for transportation to customers either locally or over a significant distance with a degree of safety that is roughly equal to that of transporting gasoline today. So then carbon nanotubes may one day open the door to the widespread use of clean, non-polluting hydrogen fuel for all of the things that we use fossil fuels for today. blogcritics.org

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