Jeff St. John 06 24 09, 1:14 PM

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Chicken Feather-Based Hydrogen Storage?

Could chicken feathers be cooked into super-cheap nanoscale hydrogen storage for fuel cell-powered cars?

Researchers at the University of Delaware say yes.

The rather unorthodox technology comes from Erman Şenöz and Richard P. Wool at the university's chemical engineering department. They've described a process of heating chicken feathers via controlled pyrolisis – heating without oxygen – so that the proteins within them form hollow carbon microtubes with nanoporous walls.

Various other nanomaterials are being investigated as hydrogen storage media. But Wool say their carbonized chicken feathers (CCFF) could form a 20-gallon car hydrogen storage tank for about $200, compared to about$30,000 for one using metal hydrides or $5.5 million for one using carbon nanotubes, Green Car Congress reports.

The research was presented Tuesday at the ACS Green Chemistry Institute's annual conference in College Park, Md.

Besides hydrogen storage, the researchers are working on making roofing, car parts and circuit boards out of chicken feathers. The United States produces about six billion pounds of waste chicken feathers per year, so we might as well do something with them.

The Department of Energy wants researchers to get to hydrogen storage that costs less than $4 per kilowatt-hour of energy stores. Şenöz and Wool are trying to reach that goal.

Of course, the DOE also recently cut its vehicle fuel cell research funding, which could put a crimp on efforts to develop vehicle-scale storage. The department does intend to spend $68 million next year for research into stationary fuel cells for purposes such as electricity grid backup power, however (see Green Light post).