Regular readers of our site are well aware that battery technology is often cited by major carmakers as a hurdle that needs to be overcome to be able to mass produce electric and hybrid electric automobiles. GM, with their Volt concept, and many other manufacturers are placing their bets on high power lithium ion batteries.
Nanoscale materials are so small only an electron microscope can see them. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. To put that into perspective, a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide.
During the recent International Congress of Nanotechnology in San Francisco, California researchers presented a potential new method of storing hydrogen. Frantisek Svec, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Jean Fréchet, of the University of California in Berkeley, revealed that they had set a new record for storing hydrogen using a nanoporous polymers. They produced a storage medium made from styrene full of microscopic pores, sort of a sponge with really tiny holes.
Researchers at Washington State University are working on hydrogen-storage solutions involving nanosprings.
There's a new diesel additive called Envirox that uses cerium oxide as a catalyst. That's the same metal that supports more efficient and expensive platinum in catalytic converters. A company spun off from the University of Oxford called Oxonica has discovered that by breaking the cerium down into nanoparticles of just 5 to 25 nanometers in diameter, the metal turns into a highly active cata
