faculty spotlight
Hydrogen
fuel cells are the wave of the future. At least that's what Angela Lueking hopes.
July 2007
By Jessica Horton, PSIEE Writing Intern
As a child growing up in Nebraska, Angela Lueking, an assistant professor of energy and geo-environmental
engineering, always had a strong interest in science and the environment. Now, after earning degrees
in both chemical and environmental engineering, those interests have become, more specifically, energy
and carbon.
Lueking is currently utilizing these interests to further the hydrogen initiative. She is looking to
develop a carbon material that will help to solve the problem with fuel cell cars of how to store hydrogen
in a practical way.
“We're focusing right now on hydrogen storage. We are concentrating on metal-carbon materials, be it trying to catalyze the carbon materials or trying to disperse the metal on the carbon,” Lueking said.
Because hydrogen is a very reactive gas, when it comes into contact with metal surfaces it decomposes into hydrogen atoms, which can penetrate metal. Also, because it is the simplest element, it will leak from many containers. Therein lies the challenge Lueking faces: to find a material that will act as a "magnet" and draw in the hydrogen while containing the right collection of molecules to maintain a strong attraction.
“You're looking for, at the molecular level, some sort of cage for the hydrogen, some attraction between the solid material and the gas that would draw the gas into the solid,” she said. “The ideal surface would be something that has a very high surface area, so every atom in the material is exposed, as well as a certain sort of gap on the molecular level so that there would be a strong attraction between hydrogen and the material.”
Through this extensive research, Lueking has helped to synthesize a new carbon material through ball milling, a process used to alloy metals. According to Lueking, the new material is an unusual form of carbon; it is unlike diamond or graphite, although crystalline regions have been observed.
“With the data we have now, we believe we're seeing a new type of hydrogen interaction,” she said. “What we see is the hydrogen coming off at room temperature and we see various characterizations that are very unusual, so we're not quite sure what the material or the hydrogen interactions are right now, but the data suggest some sort of new interaction.”
And something new is exactly what Lueking says will drive the hydrogen economy.
“[Hydrogen fuel cells] are really going to be driven by industry,” she said. "Research needs to be done to make it viable. I'm of the opinion that it's probably going to be something that we're not expecting, some discovery that happens that turns out to be very useful, but may not have been in the original plan. A lot of the discoveries that have happened, penicillin for example, have been surprises. Quite honestly, something like that needs to happen for hydrogen, to make it viable.”
In President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, he announced a new hydrogen initiative in which he explained: “With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these [hydrogen fuel cell] cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.”
Although she's not convinced that the solution is as fast-approaching as President Bush says it is, Lueking remains optimistic about the possibility of a hydrogen economy.
“A hydrogen economy is pretty far off, but it's always in our mind; it's always the ultimate goal. More immediately we're interested just to explore new materials and new interactions because maybe some day they will have an application in something we don't even think about right now.”
Contact
Angela Lueking
akg1@ems.psu.edu