The escalating climate crisis has emerged as a pervasive concern, prompting the exploration of sustainable solutions to avert a potential environmental catastrophe. Hydrogen, touted as a promising alternative for various sectors like transportation, manufacturing, and electricity, has garnered significant attention. Despite its merits, challenges, particularly in storage, have impeded its widespread adoption. This has prompted scientists to delve into innovative solutions, including an unexpected candidate: coal.
You might wonder why hydrogen is a better alternative to fossil fuel when it comes to burning, well this falls back to the fact that molecular hydrogen (H2) when burn in oxygen produces only water as waste product. With this, scientists are looking at how to get hydrogen gas quicker without releases other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Personally, I will love to drive a completely hydrogen powered car as it will be fun to see my exhaust releasing water only instead of Carbon monoxide. The concern with hydrogen is that it is very difficult to store. Hydrogen is the lightest Element, and but while it is a gas at room temperature and pressure, it has an extremely low boiling point which makes it difficult to store. To store hydrogen, it needs to be kept in a tank at -253 degree Celsius and to keep the pressure is another concern as the pressure needed to keep hydrogen will be 100 times higher than what is needed for propane. Also Hydrogen molecules can diffuse into the metal walls of the container used to keep them, so what can be done?
One solution would be not pressurizing the molecule and rather allow it to stick to compounds or something that can absorb hydrogen. In the quest to find something that it can stick to, coal because a choice with researchers looking at hydrogen being allowed into coal beds thereby creating hydrogen batteries. Coal beds hold lots of gas and a good example is methane. Researchers are looking at using the same technique used to store methane in coal bed to store hydrogen.
While this is possible, there are a lot of factors to consider, and of them is the diffusion potential of hydrogen, how hydrogen can penetrate coal, after which there is the absorption potential. All these falls back to the type of coal that is being used for instance, Anthracite has high carbon while while Bituminous coal has less carbon within its structure causing the coals with lower carbon to be better at storage and absorption than the coal with higher carbon. Other factors will be the pore size of the coal, and the gas pressure.
This year 2023, Scientists from Penn State released a study investigating how different coal location would serve as hydrogen batteries. This research is still very new and work is still being done, but then it breakthrough to science and looking at getting a green and clean economy in the future. Lots of work still needs to be done, from absorbing, trying to prevent greenhouse gasses and so on.
As we navigate the complexities of climate change, these innovative endeavors underscore the commitment to finding sustainable solutions that hold the promise of a cleaner, greener future.
