chipperbill, page-2

re: student Do a little digging on the following, Watch the price of Lithium double. Ramifications are mind blowing.

Hydrogen is increasingly recognised as the fuel of the future. It is extremely versatile, can be burned relatively cleanly in air or used in a fuel cell, and is potentially more secure than petroleum-based fuels. So serious are security concerns that the US government has announced a USD1.2 Billion programme to build the hydrogen-powered "Freedom Car" for release to consumers by 2020. There are two major technological barriers to the use of hydrogen fuel:

- generation from solar energy with much less greenhouse impact than fossil fuels;

- storage for use in transport.

The essence of the storage problem is that gasoline has 17 wt% hydrogen and a higher calorific value per hydrogen atom than pure hydrogen and a high energy density by volume. Hydrogen mass energy densities acceptable to the automobile industry in the short term are presently achieved reversibly only with highly pressurised gas, but this approach can never meet volume density targets.

The approach taken by many researchers looking for solid-state hydrogen storage materials is to start with host materials with the lowest possible average atomic number, so that the mass fraction of hydrogen is maximised for a given hydrogen uptake. Li-based materials have the potential to meet the US DoE mass density criteria (6 wt% H by 2010, 9 wt% by 2015) and be technologically viable, given sufficient improvement in other characteristics including thermodynamic stability (or ease of desorption or decomposition), absorption rate and insensitivity to poisoning by impurities in the gas stream. Australia's excellent light-metals resources could be the basis of a new materials-based industry if these problems can be solved.

Dr. Gray's research focuses on complex mixtures of Li with other light metals, including LiBH4, LiAlH4 Li3NH4 and nitrides of Li-Mg alloys. Of these only the nitrides are presently easily reversible. The attractions and problems of these materials will be presented. His research focuses on the applications of neutron-, x-ray- and muon-beam techniques to understanding the interaction of hydrogen with potential hydrogen storage materials. These techniques are applied to samples loaded with hydrogen or deuterium in situ, at pressures up to several kilobar and temperatures from 4 K to 400 ºC. Current applied research projects include the investigation of nanostructured carbons as hydrogen storage media, the problem of reversibility in Li- and Mg-alanates, and new hydrogen storage materials based on Li3N.