Hydrogen power! It can take us up into outer space or down the freeway!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Potato chips, gummy worms, awesome playlist – ready for a road trip!
Or . . . ALMOST ready! To get from L.A. to San Diego you’d need three hours to fully charge an electric car. But a hydrogen-fueled car? Just FIVE MINUTES to fill the tank! Then we can drive there and back TWICE.
But an undetected hydrogen leak could make everything go BOOM! Can we make these cars safer? Enter Hoang Mai Luong from University of Georgia and colleagues. They created a hydrogen sensor that beats anything on the market today!
Luong’s device is made of optical sensors and a palladium alloy layer. If a leak occurs, the alloy captures the escaping hydrogen. This causes the alloy to become transparent, triggering the sensors and setting off the alarm – hydrogen leak!!
This innovation could make hydrogen-fueled road trips much safer!
As for getting a carload of humans to AGREE on a playlist . . . more scientific research is needed.
Reference: Luong, H. M., Pham, M. T., Guin, T., Madhogaria, R. P., Phan, M. H., Larsen, G. K., & Nguyen, T. D. (2021). Sub-second and ppm-level optical sensing of hydrogen using templated control of nano-hydride geometry and composition. Nature Communications, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22697-w