Hydrogen Fuel Tanks Made from Chicken Feathers Could Save $5.5 Million
Scientists have discovered a remarkable, unexpected and cheap way to store hydrogen fuel– using carbonized chicken feather fibers.
The problem of storing hydrogen as fuel has traditionally been a perplexing and expensive dilemma. For instance, a car with a 20-gallon hydrogen storage tank made from carbon nanotubes or metal hydrides– two of the best ideas so far– would add $5.5 million or $30k respectively to the price of that vehicle.
A storage tank made from carbonized chicken feathers, however, would only mark up the cost a measly $200. The green bio-material would also help solve the problem of how to dispose of the 2.7 billion kilograms of chicken feathers generated each year by commercial poultry operations.
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One of the major reasons hydrogen-powered vehicles aren’t commonplace on our highways is the immensely difficult problem of how to store enough of the fuel on-board to give those vehicles a cruising range that approaches that of gasoline or diesel fuel. Storing sufficient quantities requires placing it under extreme pressure, which can add significant weight to the vehicle and increase the potential for a dangerous explosion.
That problem has led scientists to look toward structures like carbon nanotubes for a solution, since they can pack large quantities of hydrogen at normal pressure within a fairly small space. The catch is that manufacturing carbon nanotubes is very expensive and ultimately impractical.
Enter scientists at the University of Delaware, who while researching the potential of keratin derived from chicken feathers to improve the performance of microcircuits, unexpectedly discovered that by heating the keratin fibers they could strengthen its structure enough to compare to the strength of nanotubes. In other words, the hydrogen storage capacity of the strengthened keratin was essentially equivalent to that of carbon nanotubes, but using nothing more than chicken feathers as raw material.
In addition to hydrogen storage, the new method could turn chicken feather fibers into a number of other eco-products like hurricane resistant roofing, lightweight car parts, as well as the aforementioned bio-based computer circuit boards.
Furthermore, utilizing this technology would be recycling at its best. Previously, there has been no major use for all the feathers leftover from chickens in the poultry industry.
Image Credit: Just chaos on Flickr under a Creative Commons License
Down the yellow brick H2 road again eh! Algae based bio-diesel, and bio-gases from the abundant flows of sewage in America including the offal from factory farms can reduce our foreign oil consumption, as can converting to the fairly common and very serviceable turbo-bio diesel engines from Europe and Japan, but America has it’s head up its proverbial, and doesn’t change one damn bit! We will be dreaming the H2 dream, building McMansions, and driving SUV’s with “Elvis” bobble dolls on the dash long after Asia has opened up its Empire, replaced the sawbuck with the “Yuan” internationally, and converted us to a tolerable ‘Third World’ entity, an oddity among it’s Empire of nations, Americans, they will say, in 2050, a strange lot, still winning WWII in their movies, slaving a life-time to hear a gasoline V-8 engine rumble, driving archaic 2 cylinder 1930’s engined Harley Davidson motorcycles, wearing Stetson hats and cowboy boots and going to fight in the trenches somewhere in the world to justify their sexuality! The rest of the world will have moved on to the far superior notions of the biologies and sustainabilities, while Americans will still build Sherman tanks and worship Elvis and Michael Jackson in Hollywood temples to times gone by! Americans will be categorized with the eccentric British, who will never really get over their long defunct “Empire” and still try to burn coal in stoves in their kitchens for old times sake! Change is not easy for Americans, nor is flexibility, and the H2 fixation a norm for them, even in light of the ready algae-bio-diesel to diesel engine solution at hand and workable in every respect, but not adopted because ???
Thanks for the comments. After reading Shan’s post, I began to look at the life of a chicken. I realized they do have great lives. They eat tons of food. If my job were to eat tons of food, I’d be the happiest man alive….because I LOVE food. So, I would have to agree with everything everyone else said.
god didn’t put chickens here for us to look at you guys needa accept the facts of life