Swedish Chemists posit metallic hydrogen as an energy rich fuel.

[NNadir]

"a fuel is the gaseous nature of hydrogen molecules, giving the necessity of compression in heavy and somewhat unsafe pressurized gas cylinders to enable transport and storage of the fuel. The method of hydrogen storage under development using absorption in metal hydrides may be useful in some cases, but it is not a general solution to the problems of storage and distribution of hydrogen because of the large mass of the absorber. If hydrogen should become the fuel or energy carrier of the future, these problems must be solved. The energy content of hydrogen is the highest of any fuel (except nuclear fuel) relative to the mass of hydrogen alone. Thus, it appears necessary to find forms of hydrogen that can be stored and transported without much overhead, while still retaining the high energy content of hydrogen gas. We have recently1,2 described experimental results on atomic hydrogen in a condensed form. This form of hydrogen was suggested to be a form of metallic hydrogen.2 However, its conductivity may not be its most useful property but rather its energy content. We are able to form this material at low pressure, where we believe condensed atomic hydrogen to be more stable than at high pressure; other groups have usually studied metallic hydrogen at very high pressure. Thus, we do not identify any technological drawbacks such as the high cost of production and transport..."

From Energy and Fuels, the abstract is here: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef050172n.html

[kikiek]

1. So far tonight the Swedes, Finns, and Italians have found potential

alternative fuel sources. Here we sit. What fools we have in this country.

[NNadir]

2. It's not like I filter it either. American chemists only talk coal and

oil in this journal, with some exceptions.

I only report non-greenhouse gas chemistry that I find in these journals, and very little else.

The Europeans and Asians are way ahead of the Americans in the use of biological fuels.

[kikiek]

3. Selfish and stupid. Sigh.

[madrchsod]

6. the americans talk about coal

because we have billions of tons of the stuff. not to explore the technology of using coal is foolish. there are just as many problems with developing biological fuels as with coal. in the future there will be a mix of all energy sources in the united states everyone in the industry knows this, it`s just the money to do it. wasting hundreds of billions of dollars each year on the war machine has and will delay our conversion away from a totally oil based society

[NNadir]

8. No the Americans talk about coal because they haven't heard of global

climate change.

The American energy establishment is conservative and timid. Conservatives are people who believe that nothing should be tried the first time.

I read this journal pretty regularly. Other nations publish on coal, particularly the Chinese, but their publications are far more distributed between fossil fuels and non-greenhouse gas fuels. Most foreign papers mention global climate change; few American papers appear to give a shit.

If coal use continues unabated there will be no future and least of all, an American future.

[lapfog_1]

4. Hydrogen is not an energy source, but MAY be a carrier

Here is some efforts in the US to create safe hydrogen storage for vehicles which uses metal hydrides to store hydrogen gas. Metallic hydrogen could be very interesting.

Bad news is that using hydrogen in an internal combustion engine may need a lot more work (see the news update).

http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/h2new.htm

[NNadir]

5. You are correct.

I am skeptical about the hydrogen hype all together, although I recognize the potential of hydrogen as a synthetic intermediate in energy conversion processes.

This paper however, is interesting.

[Coastie for Truth]

7. Using metal hydrides to store hydrogen

is the inner working principle of the Ni-Metal Hydride battery.

Stan Ovshinsky did a lot of works on these alloys, per se, or the storage of hydrogen. Some of his patents that are only for the alloys separate and distinct from batteries include:

-4,431,561

-4,948,423

-5,002,730

Stan and his various companies have about 125 patents on hydrogen storage alloys and metal hydride batteries.

[skids]

9. Atomic hydrogen is some interesting stuff.

As a plasma used in some pretty brutal cutting torches. Tears stuff apart fast and not just because it's hot.

[phantom power]

10. Wow. How do you make metallic hydrogen at low pressure??

[Coastie for Truth]

11. The conventional physical chemistry models are

Either:
1) Temperatures with a fraction a fraction of a degree of absolute zero, or

2) As an alloy (people have looked at alloys of hydrogen with titanium, zirconium, and the Rare Earth metals -- this is the basis of the Ni-Metal Hydride batteries).

I have worked with TiH4 --- and you have to "dope" it with various metals so the heating and reduced pressure liberate the H.

[NNadir]

12. According to the paper...

it is a state of matter known as Rydberg matter (after the discoverer of the famous constant, I guess) that is obtained catalytically from and iron/metallic potassium catalyst. In the paper the catalyst is contained in a tantalum foil. The homolytic cleavage of the hydrogen is actually derived from pumping with a Nd:Yttrium garnet laser.

Like many hydrogen schemes, I suspect that it is somewhat less practical than the authors seem to wish to imply.

I still see no other reason to do anything other than DME as a hydrogen carrier as opposed various other than that direct hydrogen schemes are regarded as being sexy and cool. DME is well understood and readily available and scalable. Rydberg matter is still an exotic lab curiousity and will not be available for many years, if at all.

[Oerdin]

13. Do you know how much pressure is needed to...

Keep hydrogen gas in a metallic state? It is monstrous. The planet Jupiter and the sun are the only natural places which metallic hydrogen is known to exist. There is no way metallic hydrogen will be economically viable or anything other then a curiosity for researchers.

[NNadir]

14. I agree that it is unlikely this will represent an economically viable

concept.

This does not mean however that one cannot have metallic hydrogen only at extreme pressures such as those found on Jupiter. Many electronic states that were previously though to be transient are known. One can actually isolate carbocation salts for instance.

I won't claim any familiarity with this work - I merely reported it because it was interesting - but I am willing to believe that hydrogen may have been prepared via exotic means that represents a metallic state at low pressure. I note that there is energy being pumped in the form of laser light.

Many phases of matter that are metastable exist. Despite the DeBeer's slogan about diamonds being forever, diamond at ambient temperature and pressure is metastable; the thermodynamically preferred form is graphite, as one can see from the phase diagram of carbon. In the presense of a suitable catalyst it is possible to catalyze the rapid phase change from diamond to graphite with a considerable output of energy. (Of course people seldom seek to actually do this.) The fact that diamonds exist on many rings, including my wife's, as a symbol of eternity, is not a function of thermodynamics so much as it is of kinetics. The ordinary relaxation of diamond to graphite takes quite some time, far longer than it would possible for my wife to notice. For practical purposes eternity needs to exist only as long as the observer.

A similar effect may stabilize metallic hydrogen in the system the paper describes.