Hydrogen gas could someday replace fossil fuels as a “clean” energy source, producing only water and energy. However, handling large quantities of gaseous hydrogen is cumbersome, and converting it to a liquid requires vessels that can withstand extremely high pressures. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have developed a method to store and release highly pure hydrogen with salts in the presence of amino acids.

The reversible storage of hydrogen in solid salts has emerged as one potential way to make the fuel easier to transport and handle, but the reactions to do this require precious metals as catalysts and may produce carbon dioxide as an unwanted byproduct. So, Henrik Junge, Matthias Beller and colleagues developed effective storage-release systems with both bicarbonate and carbonate salts, as well as manganese, which is a more widely available metal catalyst.

The researchers found that converting bicarbonate and hydrogen into formate, and vice versa, was most effective with potassium salts, a manganese-based catalyst and lysine—an amino acid that acted as an additional promoter and reacted with carbon dioxide to capture it—at reaction temperatures below 200 F. After five storage-release cycles, the reaction system produced hydrogen with a high yield (80%) and purity (99%).

If you’ve never heard of molten salt reactors before, prepare to have your mind blown. These cutting-edge pieces of technology might well be the answer to freeing our species from its addiction to fossil fuels.

First constructed and operated in the 1960s, molten salt reactors are an interesting and promising energy technology. There’s a variety of different designs for these reactors, but they all, in essence, primarily utilize molten fluoride salts kept under low pressure as the primary coolant for the reactor.

Technology to produce, convert and store energy is central to these researchers’ efforts.

The project will take 7–8 years. An 853-mile-long (1,373 km) undersea electricity cable connecting Egypt with Europe has been touted to help Europe’s impending energy crisis amidst Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Greece is in embarking on one of Europe’s most ambitious energy projects by linking up its electricity grid with Egypt’s.

An underwater cable will carry 3,000 MW of electricity — enough to power up to 450,000 households — and will run from northern Egypt directly to Attica in Greece.

The project is being undertaken by the Copelouzos Group, whose management met last week with the Egyptian leaders to speed up the process.