Question: What ideas do you currently have on storing the hydrogen for the cars, and is it expensive?

Jemma Rowlandson answered on 24 Jun 2014:

Hi Wallis!

Well there are many ideas for storing hydrogen. The one that they use in cars at the moment is squashing the hydrogen into a compressed gas cylinder. These cylinders are very expensive, and it’s why the cars cost so much money (around $100,000!).

The materials I am looking at soak up hydrogen gas like a sponge instead. They are made of carbon, which you make by burning materials like wood or even a pizza. They also contain lots of tiny holes, so small you can’t even see them under a microscope. You could actually fit 10,000 of these holes side by side in the width of one strand of hair! These holes are really important as hydrogen sticks to the walls. The more holes you have, the more hydrogen you can store.

My materials are cheap to make, but at the moment they only work at very low temperatures (almost -200 degrees!). When you warm them up to normal room temperature they don’t work very well. My research is looking at making materials that store lots of hydrogen at room temperature.