• Question: In how many years will hydrogen be used in phone batteries

    Asked by to Thomas, Saiful, Laurence, Chris on 11 Jan 2017. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Chris Eames

      Chris Eames answered on 11 Jan 2017:


      Hi thanks for the interesting question

      I don’t think hydrogen will ever be used in phone batteries. Batteries instead store energy by moving lithium around inside crystals. We can’t use hydrogen in the same way because it bonds too tightly to the crystal and we would have to use a lot of energy to pull the hydrogen out which would probably destroy the crystal and mean we couldn’t recharge it to use again.

      Hydrogen is instead used in fuel cells where it reacts with air to form water and produce energy. Hydrogen contains a lot of energy (3x as much as petrol) but it isn’t very dense. So you need a big tank of hydrogen – not practical to power a mobile phone.

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