As an alternative vehicle fuel, natural gas or methane has not received much attention. Millions of environmentally-friendly cars powered by natural gas are driving the world's roads, but they still occupy only a fraction of the new cars sold. This is due in part to the fact that such vehicles require large and expensive high pressure tanks to store enough fuel to meet the needs of the driver. Now researchers have developed a new material that can store large quantities of methane at low pressure. If they can shed light on how to mass produce this material, this research may accelerate the development of large-capacity fuel tanks and promote the wider adoption of natural gas-powered vehicles. As an alternative to high-pressure tanks, researchers have created a variety of sponge-like porous crystalline materials. They can absorb methane under moderate pressure and release it when the pressure is reduced. One such material is a metal organic framework (MOF) composed of metal atoms linked by organic groups. Among them, the best adsorbent is the MOF named HKUST-1 that was created in 1999 by a Hong Kong-based researcher in China. Studies have confirmed that 180 cubic centimeters of methane gas can be stored per cubic centimeter of adsorbent. This is not bad, but it still fails to reach the target volume ratio (v/v) set by the US Department of Energy (DOC)—263. Today, the DOE's goal is within easy reach. Researchers led by David Fairen-Jimenez, a chemist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, have proposed a simple method to make HKUST-1 denser and increase v/v to 259, thus for the first time basically approaching the goal of DOE. "Everything starts with a mistake made by a doctoral student in the laboratory," Fairen-Jimenez said. The team was trying various recipes to convert HKUST-1 into a sol gel. Dr. Tian Tian, ​​a doctoral student, suspended a batch of HKUST-1 particles in an ethanol-based solution and placed the solution into a centrifuge to “drive†most of the solvent out. He then planned to put the container in a microwave oven for drying, but inadvertently a bottle was dropped under a vacuum hood and stayed there for one night. This makes ethanol slowly evaporate, and the key is here. The next morning, Tian realized that he had left a high-density HKUST-1 material. Some adjustments to the formulation have enabled researchers to produce the best methane storage adsorbent to date. The team reported this result in the recently published Nature-Material magazine.
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A new methane storage material can accelerate the adoption of natural gas-powered cars.