Bike riding is tough enough without the prospect of having hydrogen stored next to your nether regions. For a long time, that was one of the main reasons why electric bikes didn’t all have fuel cells. One of many. Now the company SiGNa Chemistry has a way to make it safer and more feasible, using a special powder.
The range extending system that SiGNa developed uses a sandy metal powder called sodium silicide, which creates hydrogen gas as soon as water hits it. According to the company, sodium silicide is “a safe, air-stable reactive metal powder” that produces hydrogen at about half the pressure of a soda can. I’m not exactly clear on precisely how it’s made, but it looks like the powder can be formed by absorbing sodium in porous silicon dioxide, or reacting sodium directly with elemental silicon.
