New process generates hydrogen from aluminum alloy to run engines, fuel cells

From Purdue: http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

Interested to see if this will yield some practical applications. An earlier CAFE thread mentions a water-powered car. This would seem to make that at least possible.

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While it's a neat trick, the process uses up the aluminum which then needs to be recovered using electricity. This makes it a very fancy storage battery.

Since refining aluminum takes enormous amounts of electricity it will not really be a solution.

In my opinion.

I wish they had included information about the rates of the reaction. It might make a good emergency power source for certain environments, assuming the gallium and aluminum are stable and will store for a long time. I'd also like to hear about the impact of contaminants in the water.

Daniel

gadget_lover said:

While it's a neat trick, the process uses up the aluminum which then needs to be recovered using electricity. This makes it a very fancy storage battery....

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Yep, that's the problem with so many of the "alternative" energy sources. They aren't actually an alternate source, just an alternative storage/transfer medium for energy produced by some other means. One of these might be the miracle alternative to batteries for an electric car or some other use. But we've still got to work on increasing the available electricity supply to meet the increased demand such alternatives is sure to generate.

gadget_lover said:

While it's a neat trick, the process uses up the aluminum which then needs to be recovered using electricity. This makes it a very fancy storage battery.

Click to expand...

A "fancy storage battery" capable of powering an automobile as well as current internal combustion engines would be a great thing indeed. If this is economically viable - and that's a big if - it would be a huge advance over existing methods of storing hydrogen.

High-pressure tanks for gaseous hydrogen and cryogenic bottles for liquid hydrogen don't lend themselves to automotive designs. Those storage methods are inherently hazardous in normal operation, and potentially disastrous in collisions. Quite bulky and have constant problems with leakage. Also would require hugely expensive nationwide infrastructure for piping around hydrogen and refueling vehicles.

This method would allow fuel pellets to be recycled at centralized locations with nuclear reactors or hydropower plants nearby, putting zero emissions into the atmosphere. Refueling of vehicles could be fairly straightforward.

If this turned out to be workable, the use of petroleum as fuel for cars and trucks could be eliminated and the US could become independent of imported petroleum.

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DonShock said:

Yep, that's the problem with so many of the "alternative" energy sources. They aren't actually an alternate source, just an alternative storage/transfer medium for energy produced by some other means. One of these might be the miracle alternative to batteries for an electric car or some other use. But we've still got to work on increasing the available electricity supply to meet the increased demand such alternatives is sure to generate.

Click to expand...

The article does not claim this to be an "alternative" energy source.

Suppose that a practical energy storage system capable of powering automobiles and trucks is developed. The demand for energy to recharge the storage devices would be huge.

That demand could be met with new pebble-bed nuclear reactors, new clean-burning coal plants, and eventually through space-based solar plants in geosynchronous orbit beaming down power with microwaves.

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ringzero said:

The article does not claim this to be an "alternative" energy source.

Suppose that a practical energy storage system capable of powering automobiles and trucks is developed. The demand for energy to recharge the storage devices would be huge.

That demand could be met with new pebble-bed nuclear reactors, new clean-burning coal plants, and eventually through space-based solar plants in geosynchronous orbit beaming down power with microwaves.

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Click to expand...

Exactly! Nuclear and clean coal can met those demands using current technology. And although spaced based solar would take some work, ground based solar is workable if inefficient but that can be overcome by upscaling the size of the projects. But in most of the news stories about similar "alternative" energy systems, such as hydrogen fuel cell or battery electric powered cars, the increased need for power production by some other method is ignored. Primarily I think the reason is that they don't consider there are any "acceptable" ways to produce the power. Nuclear and clean-coal just aren't Green enough even though both are efficient, safe, and minimally polluting.

sounds feasible...

reminds me of the popular science article about using NIMH cells to generate and store hydrogen

I used to do this very thing back in school, but don't try it at home. We would put some water and lye in an empty bottle sitting in a pan of water, poke some wads of aluminum foil down into it, and quickly stretch a balloon over the bottle's mouth. The balloons would fill with hydrogen. Most would then get a rubber band fuse and be exploded in the hallway outside the dorm room. Made a nice flash and big boom, but never left a mark on the ceiling.

Geoff

Flying Turtle said:

I used to do this very thing back in school, but don't try it at home. We would put some water and lye in an empty bottle sitting in a pan of water, poke some wads of aluminum foil down into it, and quickly stretch a balloon over the bottle's mouth. The balloons would fill with hydrogen. Most would then get a rubber band fuse and be exploded in the hallway outside the dorm room. Made a nice flash and big boom, but never left a mark on the ceiling.

Geoff

Click to expand...

you dont find lye very often now a days

but that doesnt stop me from brewing hydrogen through pencil carbon rods and the power supply, use some soap in the water will give you bubbles of highly volatile mix of H and O....a click of the barbeque lighter and
....yeah, dont try it INDOORS

At the time we could find "Red Devil" lye in the grocery store. I haven't looked for any since then (35 yrs. ago).

Geoff

Still available here.