PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 687 June 4, 2004 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein

While it is not economically feasible to store hydrogen as an
automobile fuel *now* I wouldn't rule it out even in the short-term.
Solid metallic hydrogen is close to being achieved:

Hydrogen metal on the horizon.
10 April 2002
"Scientists have long expected solid hydrogen to become a metal when
it is compressed, but so far electrical conductivity has only been
detected in liquid hydrogen. Now an experimental study of solid
hydrogen at pressures up to 320 GPa predicts that it will become
metallic at a pressure of 450 GPa - over four million times
atmospheric pressure. Ren LeToullec and co-workers at the CEA in
France also found that solid hydrogen becomes opaque - or 'black' -
under compression (P Loubeyre et al 2002 Nature 416 613)."
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/6/4/6

For this to be useful as a storage means, the hydrogen has to be
stable at "reasonable" temperatures. A recent study shows solid
nitrogen can be stable up to 100K:

Novel nitrogen is a semiconductor.
9 May 2001
"A new form of nitrogen that behaves as a semiconductor could be a
future source of energy, according to Russell Hemley and colleagues of
the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the US. The group compressed
nitrogen gas to create the 'non-molecular' nitrogen - an opaque solid
that releases a flood of energy when it reverts to its well-known
diatomic form (M Eremets et al 2001 Nature 411 170).
"The team then reduced the pressure on different samples at a variety
of temperatures. Remarkably, they found that the semiconducting state
persisted at normal atmospheric pressure at temperatures below 100 K.
A pronounced hysteresis effect arises because the change in phase lags
behind the change in pressure."
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/05/5/5

There are conflicting theoretical studies about whether metallic
hydrogen would retain its solid form and electronic properties when
the pressure was released. This study on nitrogen suggests that it
could.


Bob Clark

Uncle Al wrote in message ...
Sam Wormley wrote:

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 687 June 4, 2004 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein
[snip]

while on Earth hydrogen might also play an important role as
fuel since it has the highest chemical energy density by mass.
(Tejeda et al., Physical Review Letters, 4 June 2004).

Buncha crap. There is no economic way to store elemental hydrogen at
more than about 40% the energy density (enthalpy of combustion/volume)
of gasoline - high pressure, cryogenic, chemisorbed in HYSTOR alloy,
adsorbed in porous solids or nanotubes. All crap. The absolute
densest volumetric storage of hydrogen is lithium hydride, which is
enormously hazardous and toxic as well as being expensive and an
expensive bitch to recycle. There *is* one singular case of
inexpensive, stable, relatively dense hydrogen storage - hydrocarbon
fuels.

Thermodynamics cannot be cheated within a heat engine. The
H*Y*D*R*O*G*E*N car is even more stooopid than the E*L*E*C*T*R*I*C car
- which itself was so monumentally stooopid that it didn't outlast
government subsidies by even a month.

[snip]