Crispy noodles help drive hydrogen cars

Researchers from the University of Manchester have developed a new material that could help reduce carbon emissions and drive hydrogen cars.

The noodle like 'polymer of intrinsic microporosity' could remove CO2 from fuel emissions

Materials chemist, Dr Peter Budd, has been granted £150,000 of EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) funding to investigate the material’s potential to remove CO₂ from fossil fuel and hydrogen production plants. Dr Budd describes the material like ‘crispy noodles’, he said, “Imagine a plate of spaghetti – when it’s all coiled together there’s not much space between the strands. Now imagine a plate of crispy noodles – there rigid twisted shape means that there are lots of holes.” This ‘polymer of intrinsic microporosity,’ or PIM, could be used to remove and recover CO₂.

The new funding will also allow the group to extend their research to investigate the PIM’s ability to store large amounts of hydrogen. Until now, polymers have not been regarded as materials that could store hydrogen because most polymers have enough conformational and rotational freedom to pack space efficiently and are therefore not microporous. However, not only do the polymers that Dr Budd and his colleagues have developed possess microporosity, their chemical composition can be tailored using synthetic chemistry making them ideal for hydrogen storage.

Dr Budd said: “The PIMs act a bit like a sponge when hydrogen is around. It’s made up of long molecules that can trap hydrogen between them, providing a way of supplying hydrogen on demand. The holes between the molecules give the polymer a very high surface area – each gram has a surface area equivalent to around three tennis courts. The molecules in the polymer act like sieves, catching smaller molecules like hydrogen in the gaps between them.”

Currently Dr Budd and his key collaborators at the University of Birmingham and Cardiff have a polymer that can store 3% of its weight as hydrogen. They feel that if this figure could be doubled then it would become a viable way to store hydrogen for cars. “If we could get the figure up to six per cent, that may be enough for a car to go 300 miles without a refill,” said Dr Budd.

By Leila Sattery