Few younger readers will remember how popular hydrogen fuel cells were in the media a couple of decades ago. They came before electric cars. They were supposed to be the cleaner alternative to internal combustion engines. And they never really took off because hydrogen fuel cells were simply too costly to make. But people continued to work with hydrogen because it is the most abundant element in the universe, and its conversion into energy does not as a rule result in harmful by-products. A recent study by researchers from Kumamoto University found a way to extract hydrogen from ammonia without the release of noxious nitrogen oxides. They added a new compound comprising copper, silicon, and aluminum, which made ammonia combust at lower than usual temperatures, and it eliminated the release of nitrogen oxides. Theoretically, this method could produce energy from hydrogen in a much cheaper way than other existing […]