Breakthrough Material Purifies Water While Generating Electricity

reply to post by Highlander64


You need to complete the circuit to have the electricity flow through your house and all of the devices that use the electricity is the draw on that supply which equals use...

As far as the government be it local or federal, adding to the bill.. that is true... same with land line and cellular devices... those added costs go strictly to the tax collectors who don't provide the services...

There may be a slight case in their favor for taxing gasoline since the interstate highway system is in gov't control, but I have yet to see a gov't vehicle manning the powerlines.. phone lines.. cell towers.. I may have missed them... have you seen them???

Originally posted by Highlander64

and of course we are not given all the facts about electricity - ever wonder how the grid copes with excess power generated whilst no oneis using it? Since they cant store it in batteries what do they do? Someone once said they light up city buildings to burn the excess juice

If you aren't loading the grid so much, the alternators become easier to turn back at the power station. So the control systems throttle back the turbines. If they reach a point where they're not operating very efficiently, the system will start dropping off generation capacity so that the remaining alternators are running in an efficient part of their curve.

but I have to wonder, and would love an answer to this idea - if the red (positive) wire coming into my house has the power, and I dont have the black wire connected, nothing will run, but when the black (negative) wire, which runs back away from the house, is connected, everything runs and I am drawing current

since elctricity is the movement of a charge, and the charge is moving from the red wire, through my appliance and into the black wire, does it actually run out or does it go back through the black wire in a perhaps deplected current, to be re-billed by the power company to someone else?

deduction = probably

They're selling you potential, not electrons.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by JacKatMtn

 

did some research-

en.wikipedia.org...

" Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium"

Melting point- 660.37 °C or 933.52 K or 1220.666 °F Rather low for a metal.

If you read the OP article, it says

To make use of this aluminum, Woodall melts it and combines it with gallium, indium and tin. In room temperature, these last three ingredients coarse through the metal as a liquid dissolving the grains of aluminum around it.

So it seems the aluminum is only partially melted, to the point where it becomes grainy, and then the exotic metals do the rest.

If you were talking about remelting pop cans, this would be true. However, there's more going on here.

The function of the aluminum in this nifty mixture is to accept the oxygen from the water, leaving free hydrogen and heat as a byproduct. Afterwards, what you've got is aluminum oxide. In order to get the aluminum back to a useful state, you have to reduce it. That requires a LOT of energy, oddly, it's everything you got out of it in your amazing hydrogen generator and some extra.

The function of the gallium, indium, and tin is to prevent the aluminum from attaining a stable surface state, so that it will react with the water (or air, if you give it a chance) instead of forming a passivating layer. This is a distant offshoot from what was originally a military weapon development program, intended to provide people such as myself with a means to let myself in to places I was unwanted and to break things in an efficient, military fashion. To this end, we had for some 'projects' a set of what looked like magic markers, one for each class of alloy you might run into. Aluminum was easy - draw a ring on aluminum armor with the right pen, wait a minute, and bang it with your fist, and the middle would pop out and hit the floor. It, too, used gallium, indium and a half dozen other trace metals.

The practical jokes you could get into with that tech was the stuff of legend.

reply to post by Bedlam


awesome post! I can only imagine what you could do with such things.

back on topic-

I did some research and this is what i found-

From the OP- this proces creates "aluminum trihydroxide". This is a byproduct of the reaction you mentioned of splitting the water into a h+ ion and a hydroxyl.

"Hydrated alumina, also known as alumina trihydrate (ATH), or simply hydrate, is more accurately
designated chemically as aluminum trihydroxide, Al(OH)3"
-Melting Point 300 C

seems to be the general consensus around the web.

n order to get the aluminum back to a useful state, you have to reduce it. That requires a LOT of energy, oddly, it's everything you got out of it in your amazing hydrogen generator and some extra.

I dont think that is odd at all

show me any power station that gives out more energy it puts in? nowhere in this thread do I insinuate this is a free energy machine!

reply to post by Bedlam



you piqued our interest there - what practical jokes can you elaborate on?

reply to post by Highlander64


Watch this demonstration of gallium...



I can think of a lot of practical jokes just from that alone.

Interesting find. Thanks for sharing it!

JLVR


reply to post by VonDoomen

reply to post by gift0fpr0phecy


awesome video!

NOBODY TELL ANONYMOUS ABOUT THIS!

I looked up the coal reserves, it is 860,938 million tons, the bauxite reserves is 38,000 million tons, of which only about 20% is aluminum. It also requires an enormous amount of energy to harvest the aluminum so this technology is only interesting as energy carrier.

I wonder what portion of energy goes to heat and what portion to hydrogen. It seems to me that the production of heat is the major issue with any type of water to hydrogen conversion. They make is seem like it is an advantage, which sounds odd to me. You can always burn the hydrogen to create heat, so you would rather have that 100% of the energy is in the form of hydrogen.

reply to post by VonDoomen

show me any power station that gives out more energy it puts in? nowhere in this thread do I insinuate this is a free energy machine!

No, but coal and other fuels are pennies compared to what this idea is proposing. If you break down the numbers you would find it won't be feasible.

It is estimated that the global coking-coal market price was around $100 per tonne and the thermal-coal price was around $60 in 2007.

1

And because of the energy needed to keep repeating this process, you are going to need an outside energy source. Meaning it's either going to come from coal or from a more expensive chemical process.

So....


Why not just burn coal?

Furthermore, all of the aluminum that goes into the reaction can be fully retrieved. It just needs to be thrown into a crucible and reprocessed.

This is what Woodall says about getting his materials back:

The spent Al(OH)3 is easily rejuvenated back to metallic Al using the well-established commercial Hall-Heroult electrolysis. Currently carbon electrodes are used thus generating some carbon dioxide, but a commercial TiB2 electrode technology for Al smelting has been developed by the De Nora Company to displace carbon electrodes. Since most smelting operations are done with hydroelectric power, i.e. not using fossil fuels, Al smelting could become totally green.

Source


Funny, he doesn't mention something about large scale production:

Since the small Ga and In components are expensive but inert (see image 3), they can economically be recovered by mechanical separation, e.g. using a centrifuge.

He is using a centrifuge in a lab right now to recover his Ga and In, but how was he planning to do that when he scales up?


Also, he listing how much Al is in the Earth's crust and how much energy could be produced from it in theory. Of course, every chemist knows you it's damn near impossible to ever get a 100% yield. (100% efficiency) Maybe something he should think about.

nanohub.org...

He is encouraging venture capitalists to design a system that uses both — capturing the hydrogen as fuel and using the heat to pull clean water out of the air.

You don't say....

A nifty experimental achievement but only a curiosity for small-scale demonstrations but not practical for large scale implementation. What's been left out of the loop as far as overall efficiency goes is the initial electrolytic production of aluminium which, for good reason, is sometimes called 'solidified electricity' because of the horrendous amount of electrical energy required to refine the bauxite ore into pure Al. There's an Al production plant in this state and it consumes around 25% of the electrical energy generated here (hydro btw).

This process can never produce enough enough energy to even produce the alloys it uses, let alone have surplus energy for external use. It's a slave to the basic laws of energy conservation like any other process.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by Grey Magic

 

No one said it was free energy or anything? However it is nice to see something that has more than one purpose. Purifying water and generating electricity. Maybe you have some personal research of your own that is more beneficial to humanity? Regardless, Im glad theres still researchers out there trying to invent things that help humanity, and arent just an attempt to rape this planet of its resources as fast as possible for further gain.

So yes you can belittle this breakthrough, but only because you have the luxury of living somewhere with cheap energy and fresh water. I wonder if little malnourished african children would be so Blas'e about this?

Blas'e - "Having the sensibilities deadened by excess or frequency of enjoyment; sated or surfeited with pleasure; used up."

The amount of energy needed to create the alloy is more than is released. This energy has to come from somewhere, so if that source is a current existing "dirty" one then you are completely missing Grey Magic's point!

We can already purify water without using dirty fuels. Most areas requiring water purification have an over abundance of solar energy!

i can see a practical application for this idea

as a " just add water emergency power pack " for critical applications whier weight and reliability are more important than cost

like in submarines , spacecraft , liferafts etc etc

the unit has potentialy decades long shelf life , requires zero maintainence ,

yup - i can see several applications where a ultra lightweight , reliable power pack would be usefull - cost be dammed

As long as people keeping looking to use a combustible or chemical or nuclear radiant type of energy, they are no higher than the primitives who used wood for fire. What is needed is to tap into the energy that exists in the universe itself. Then we will have progressed another rung up the ladder. Until then we're still using bear skins and stone knives.

Wow, this is OLD news.
2nd
Have you attempted to learn ATS' search function yet?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Scoriada


lol your hysterical. Yes I actually searched the headline thank you. I know your new here, but try not to belittle people whove been here much longer, and have contributed much more to this site. I pulled up zero hits on the headline. and want to know why that is? every thread you posted was a shoddy done job with barely any info.

I on the other hand attemp to make nice looking threads with lots of material. secondly you'll notice the link I posted was from 3 days ago, and this thread was published in the breaking news section. NOT only does ATS allow multiple threads on the same topic in different forums, they also allow breaking news (posted less than 3 days old) on their breaking news section.

the more ya know

reply to post by Fromabove


I agree 100%. But, free energy could be a very dangerous tool. Is every person on the planet capable of maturely dealing with that reality? unfortunately no!

reply to post by boncho


You, as well as a few other members have totally missed the point presented in the OP and links.
This is not free energy, and no one rationale is talking about that. you guys keep bring that up. EVERY single mode of energy production is a loss for us, in that sense. so there really is no point in continually bringing this up.

Secondly you say coal is cheaper, and yes it is, when we are talking about large population dense areas. If you read the OP, they're hoping to use this in remote villages or other places FAR AWAY from civilization.
So are you honestly telling me it is more cost efficient to build a coal power plant + the necessary infrastructure in the middle of nowhere in africa to service a tribe of 50-100 people? Thats just plain ridiculous. No where is anyone arguing for this technology to be used in large scale operations. The only people talking about that here are hasty and uninformed lurkers, who happen to be arguing with no one....

And yes, if they used Coal as the initial energy provider for this process, it would still be a dirty process. However coal isnt the only form of energy production we have, there are many renewable resources such as wind and hydro. I do not understand why you are all so hung up on Coal.

Also, you people arent thinking in a linear or timely fashion. Virtually all of the material used in this process is recoverable and reusable. On the other hand, coal is not. You are crazy to think that coal wont be getting more expensive over time, and that this technology, with funding and improvements will improve over time and get cheaper.

reply to post by ignorant_ape


Thank you for the contribution. I hadnt thought of the submarine aspect, but yes this seems like it could be a very good tool for survival situations, if this can be scaled down enough to be useful and not overbearing.

spacecraft on the other hand im not sure how feasible this would be? On the other hand, if we had a settlement on the moon, we could assume they would be involved very heavily in mining operations, and would have the necessary infrastructure to atleast run this type of technology. Add in the fact that they wouldnt need continual shipments of the alloy, due to the fact they could just refine it on the moon. I guarantee that would be a lot cheaper than sending shipments between the earth and Luna.

I want to thank you again for your post because it made me think of something else. Im curious about the viability of this on the moon. Now during the day hours on the moon, the surface reaches 106 C roughly or 225 F. That right there is extremely close to the melting point of the aluminum trihydroxide of 300c. so maybe with a few focues mirrors, they could easily remelt this alloy just by using the sun. So now that i think about it, this technology may be best suited for a settlement on the moon! energy and purified water?? you betcha!

reply to post by malcr


what is more likely to happen?

A small tribe in africa being donated a multimillion dollar water desalination plant + a multimillion dollar solar panel project

OR

a small tribe in africa being donated one of these units?