Chickens sometimes get a bad rap — their very name means "coward" or "weakness," for instance — but I gotta admit, they pulled off a pretty brilliant marketing campaign with this one:
With a brilliant idea that could clear two hurdles in one leap for renewable energy sources, scientists at ETH Zurich have discovered a way to use chicken feathers to manufacture a critical component for hydrogen fuel cells.
The problem with hydrogen fuel cells (which power a car by combining hydrogen and oxygen and release WATER as a byproduct) is that they contain a substantial number of "forever chemicals," which can be highly toxic and do not biodegrade in any meaningful way.
Enter the chicken:
On the other hand, chicken is an invaluable part of the food supply but comes with 40 million metric tons annually of feathers that are incinerated as a waste product that produces CO2 and other toxic gases as well.
Yeah, you gotta get rid of those feathers somehow. For a long time we've just been burning them to a crisp. Now it turns out that they might be a vital energy source that could be the secret to making hydrogen tech even cleaner, which would be wonderful, as hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and produces no harmful waste.
Refueling with hydrogen is also as easy as refueling a gas car, unlike EV charging stations.
The secret lays in keratin, which is 90% of a feather. Scientists "converted [the keratin in feathers] to ultra-fine fibers called amyloid fibrils by breaking the feathers down in an environmentally friendly way."
The resulting product can be used to "make the membrane between the anode and cathode of the fuel cell," and considerably cheaper than with synthetic inputs. It's a win-win.
The next step "will be to investigate how stable and durable their keratin membrane is and to improve it if necessary." Chickens can feel proud at taking part in such a momentous technological development.
Just nobody tell the birds how we get the feathers. That'll, you know, upset them.
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