Energy Film: A Safe Portable Source of Hydrogen

Great strides have been made recently in making small PEM fuel cells to power personal electronics for the foot soldier, such as wireless transmitters and laptop computers. These advances are compromised by today's sources of hydrogen, which are bulky, heavy, and inconvenient. WJSA proposes to solve this problem by storing H2 at very high pressures (6000-9000 psi) in glass microspheres and packaging the microspheres in a dense layer on a strip of polymer film. For transport and storge, the film would be wound into cartridges just like photographic film. In use, the film would be drawn through a set of rollers to crush the glass microspheres, releasing the stored H2 at a controlled rate. This concept, called Energy Film, promises to be the first safe, convenient, lightweight, reliable, and inexpensive source of H2, suitable as a replacement for heavy batteries. We show that we can store H2 at energy densities (4-10MJ/kg) superior to today's compressed gas bottles. In addition, we obtain the safety inherent in storing H2 in myriad(1011/kg) independent storage volumes. In the future, resupplying electronics with H2 in the field will be as convenient as loading a modern camera with film.