Press releases are typically rather dry
material and not exactly prone to humor, but researchers at Savannah Research
National Laboratory (SRNL) preface the news
release for their impactful glass microsphere breakthrough, with a riddle.
"What looks like a fertilized egg, flows like water, gets stuffed with
catalysts and exotic nanostructures and may have the potential of making the
current retail gasoline infrastructure compatible with hydrogen-based vehicles
of the future – not to mention also contributing to arenas such as nuclear
proliferation and global warming?"
The Bulletin, the monthly magazine of
The American Ceramic Society, carries
their answer (PDF). Unlike many press releases, their work is truly
very different than other existing research in that it represents a whole new
class of materials that can be used for diverse storage purposes, by having
properties similar to both a liquid and being solid in form. The new
material consists of tiny hollow spheres, known formally as Porous Wall-Hollow
Glass Microspheres (PW-HGM).
The spheres measure a scant 2-100 microns in diameter. This puts them at
smaller than the width of a human hair. The key asset of the spheres are
tiny pores which adorn their surface. These pores can be controlled by
processing to measure from 100 to 3,000 Angstroms and they form full tunnels
between the inner and outer wall, through which chemicals of controlled sizes
can pass.
SRNL Researchers G.G. Wicks, L.K. Heung, and R.F. Schumacher led the
project. In it they showed hydrogen and other gas adsorbents, as well as
other chemicals, could be pumped in through the pores. This allows for
relatively safe solid-state storage of hydrogen or other reactive gas by
limiting their exposure to the atmosphere, with which they would react.
The new research treads on foreign ground, as the tiny nanoscale pores have never been seen before. The tiny structures were photographed in a
series of images taken by the researchers.
A major application of the new material is gas streaming filtering. By
adjusting the porosity, the material will act as a filter, absorbing one type
of gas and letting the others pass.
Most promising yet, the microballoons can have their mechanical properties
tweaked to act like a fluid, including flowing along pipes. This means
that current gas distribution infrastructures could be modified to transport
solid hydrogen, with little change. This in turn would amount in savings
of money and effort spent. The hardy little microballoons are also easily
recycled and reused, thanks to their strength.
The research is not going unnoticed. Toyota is sponsoring the SRNL to
bring the technology to market to help it with its hydrogen
vehicles. Gas purification and separation companies are also making
deals with SRNL. And the Medical College of Georgia is working closely
with SRNL researchers to apply a modified version of the microballons for drug
delivery. In total the Lab has over a dozen partnerships or
collaborations.
The research is truly quite exciting and unique, it’s good to see it getting
such attention from big names in commerce and academia. With this new
class of materials, scientist will have an entirely new material, which treads
the solid-liquid barrier offering many unique properties that are the best of
both worlds.