For the last 160 odd years we have been using carbon as a medium to store our hydrogen fuel. We called this method of H2 storage "fossil fuels". So using carbon as a device on/in which to store hydrogen is nothing new. Some other examples of "natural" hydrogen-on-carbon storage are alcohols, vegetable oils and sugar.
The only problem with this method of hydrogen storage has been that, when the hydrogen atom is transferred from the carbon atom on which it is stored to an oxygen atom, the carbon storage atom also binds to an oxygen atom creating the greenhouse gases carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide as byproduct. It is these gases that are currently contributing greatly to global warming/climate change and this is the main motivation for our push to implement cleaner energy sources.
Could carbon play a role in the new energy paradigm? Many people think so and researchers are constantly working to improve one such carbon-based hydrogen storage device. Carbon Nanotubes were developed as an outgrowth of the Fullerene research conducted by Nobel Laureates; Robert F. Curl, Harold W. Kroto, and Richard E. Smalley.
"Conceptually, single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can be considered to be formed by the rolling of a single layer of graphite (called a graphene layer) into a seamless cylinder. A multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) can similarly be considered to be a coaxial assembly of cylinders of SWCNTs, like a Russian doll, one within another; the separation between tubes is about equal to that between the layers in natural graphite. Hence, nanotubes are one-dimensional objects with a well-defined direction along the nanotube axis that is analogous to the in-plane directions of graphite." This according to M. S. Dresselhaus, Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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