New Process Generates Hydrogen from Aluminum

www.physorg.com...

A Purdue University engineer has developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines, and the technique could be used to replace gasoline.

Awesome news for people looking to avoid foreign dependency on oil. This could someday replace gasoline engines in cars and be far cheaper than fuel cells.

2 bad electric cars did the same thing better, and cheaper 10 years ago...

I was impressed that they actually gave the whole process some thought in their announcement, from the creation of hydrogen to its application to the recycling of the byproducts. At this point it's still too expensive, but if it could make use of recycled aluminum, that would be quite a selling point.

At some point, gas will become far more expensive than this process, and it may go into wider production. Bringing it out in smaller motors first seems like an excellent approach.

It also has potiental carbon benifits as well. one of the biggest issues with hydrogen fuel cells is that the easiest, cheapest source right now for hydrogen is using natural gas or other fossil fuels.

A mile a pound of alumina pellets doesn't sound like good efficiency to me.

At least compared to four miles per pound of gasoline(based on 24 MPG)

I also concur with squidboy.

[edit on 17-5-2007 by sardion2000]

For every pound of aluminum you get more than two kilowatt hours of energy in the form of hydrogen combustion and more than two kilowatt hours of heat from the reaction of aluminum with water. A midsize car with a full tank of aluminum-gallium pellets, which amounts to about 350 pounds of aluminum

It currently takes an estimated 14Kw/h of energy to produce 1kg (or roughly 7Kw/h per 1lb) of raw Aluminium metal. If the useful combustive energy-output of this new method totals 2Kw/h then there is a deficit of 5Kw/h. There either needs to be some form of renewable-energy power generation to run the smelting process, or the whole refining process needs to be reinvented to be less energy-intensive to be viable on a massive scale.

The Aluminum pellets can be recycled after they are depleted. You could also use other aluminum recycled products as well.

The problem I have with this is people at the top still have the control. If it's not gasoline, then it will be fixing the price of aluminum, then they have control again.

Originally posted by sardion2000
The Aluminum pellets can be recycled after they are depleted. You could also use other aluminum recycled products as well.

You'd need a huge stock of raw aluminium to feed the many millions of vehicles that will replace the petrol powered versions to start with. Recycled Al makes up only a fraction of the total supply as it stands

Originally posted by sardion2000
The Aluminum pellets can be recycled after they are depleted. You could also use other aluminum recycled products as well.

The chemical reaction is between the water and the aluminum. The gallium is what allows the water to disintegrate the aluminum and create hydrogen as a result, so all that is left is the gallium.

So, this is not a renewable resource. However, the countries that currently mine the most aluminum do not reside in the middle east. Australia, Brazil and China are the top three (source).

I don't have the time to figure out how much aluminum is actually out there (including recycled) right now, but i wonder how much more expensive it actually would be at this point.

No way!

They will tell you "impossible", you must know law of energy conservation. Input=Output

The same people keep on the same things.