More efficient access to hydrogen as a fuel: A new ruthenium catalyst has been developed to convert ammonia borane to hydrogen

摘要

THE ABILITY TO USE HYDROGEN AS A FUEL remains a challenge because of the difficulty in finding a stable derivative that can act as a storage medium. Hydrogen has a number of advantages such as easy conversion to electricity in a fuel cell and the fact that it contains no carbon so the conversion does not generate such detrimental byproducts as carbon dioxide. But hydrogen is highly flammable and remains a very difficult fuel to handle. Travis Williams, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, says, "Being a gas, hydrogen's biggest problem is that it can only be stored in high-pressure or cryogenic tanks."