Even in modern times as we work to find ways to store and transport energy that doesn't involve carbon, chemists provide the map of the landscape. In a paper discussing the use of ammonia for hydrogen storage, they present a graph of all different compounds I had never even heard of, and plot out their hydrogen capacity and density:

Does a good job showing that N is the next best thing to carbon if you just want to keep a lot of H around. My hat goes off to the chemists that sat down and classified all these various things over the years. Sure, there's probably different uses for things like Aluminium borohydride, so they needed to know tis properties anyways, but its probably not the kind of work that leads to a Nobel prize. Just filling in the details so that others that come after can build atop that, or avoid what's going to be a dead end.

Doesn't mean that this is the end of the story though. Just look at what Acetylene went through.

Acetylene (H2C2) is a welding gas, but is unstable in its pure form (ie, if you try to cram a bunch into a pressurized tank, it just explodes). Originally if you wanted a supply for welding you used a gas generated that combined water and calcium carbide. Finally, chemists figured out you could safely dissolve acetylene into acetone. So they started filling up canisters with acetone, and then pushing acetylene into that. Unfortunately, as you drew the acetylene out, you also got acetone vapor, which eventually depleted the acetone in the bottle, and again *boom*. Finally, they figured out you could lock the acetone in chalk, and it wouldn't evaporate; so a modern acetylene is actually full of chalk, which is full of acetone, which is full of acetylene.

Labels: chemistry ammonia hydrogen