Breakthrough Material Purifies Water While Generating Electricity

to all the naysayers in this thread. I would like to point out, as a function over time, with coal being a non-reusable resource, it will be getting more expensive over time.

If this system mentioned in the OP is truely recyclable, then over time it will become cheaper to a certain point...

oh Time, the 4th dimension, I know its not as obvious as the first 3 dimensions, but its still there

Originally posted by VonDoomen
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

edit on 6/14/2011 by VonDoomen because: (no reason given)

Still though, old news is old. Enjoy your thread.

Originally posted by Highlander64
reply to post by Bedlam

 

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

I'll say they should never have given me those or had that lock picking class. It was bad enough giving me explosives.

There was many a 'mystery' around the base for a while. I made the mistake of showing someone outside the group the kinetic padlock opener trick, and then everyone started looking for my 'mark' on the locks - the opener leaves a small but tell-tale sign. Alas.

Doesn't alluminum intake contribute to Ahlzeimers or Parkensons disese?

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by ignorant_apeNow 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!

It's worse than you think. You don't just melt the alumina, you have to reduce it by electrolysis. Here's a nice link showing all the steps - skip to number 5 "calcination" where the alumina part of the process begins.

ETA: the overall classification of goop that you use to let yourself in places and break things is called "LME" for Liquid Metal Embrittlement. Gallium is usually a part of it but there are any number of tailored LME agents for different metals. Some metals can't be broken down that way but a lot of them can - it was a big hairy deal in the late 80s and early 90s when it was TS, now I think it's just restricted. At any rate, you see more civilian research into it these days.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
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?

Too bad Africa has no natural resources of it's own, that must be the only reason they are so behind....

Africa has a large quantity of natural resources including oil, diamonds, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, but also woods and tropical fruits. It has lots of its natural resources undiscovered or barely tapped. Having a low human density, for a long period of time Africa has been colonized by more dynamic groups, exploiting African resources.

Oh dear, it's almost as if it's by design...

reply to post by VonDoomen

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!

In a sense you are because you are not accounting for the expended energy that is used in the reaction. Nor does the website of the person who is working on it.

Meaning you are choosing to be ignorant about the process. You are backing it with insufficient data. It's not our job to provide the data. The person behind it should have, and all I saw were lab tests on his website with no real breakdown of how it would be scaled up. Including no account for energy in and energy out, and dollar value pinned to the process.

In other words, it's all fluff.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
"There is enough aluminum on the Earth’s crust to supply the whole world’s energy needs," Woodall told InnovationNewsDaily.

Not so! You have to put energy into the ore, removing the oxygen and converting to metal, before you can get a portion of that energy back out again. There is no such thing as native aluminum (naturally occuring in metalic form). The chemical reaction when the alloy is added to water oxidizes the aluminum, returning it to it natural state. Thanks to the second law of thermodynamics, you always put more energy in that what you get back out.

reply to post by boncho


No, you are missing the point. You are acting as if this is being presented as a free energy device. No one anywhere is saying or arguing this. NO ONE ANYWHERE. no form of energy generation is 100% efficient. No one has broken any of the laws of thermodynamics. If you took the time to look at the links i provided, and the others that are out there, Which i will be bringing up soon, You would have seen this-

" Such a lightweight, portable system might be used to provide power and drinking water to villages and also for military operations."

"Portable Tech Might Provide Drinking Water, Power to Villages"

"Researchers at Purdue University have further developed a technology that could represent a pollution-free energy source for a range of potential applications, from golf carts to submarines and cars to emergency portable generators."

No one is talking about powering nations with this. Or creating Free energy devices. Obviously this stuff is in its infancy. However, I am hoping that we may learn from this process and hopefully we can come up with even better materials to achieve the same results.

reply to post by VonDoomen


It's hype.

It comes out all the time. It is absolute, unadulterated hype!

A couple press releases and some banter and the people reporting on it have run away with the idea. All the things you mentioned are possible in theory [at what cost?], and the only thing that has been done so far is lab work and theory.

Meaning anything more to say about it is hype!

No matter what, you are going to lose energy in the process. If you are using green energy for it, why waste it and put it through another process?

As far as the water goes, look up some of the systems that are in use by crafty inventors in India. It will be tough to find though, because they don't issue press releases.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
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?

Actually, since this was brought up I should inform you that:


Africa receives lots from privte water companies.

Of course nothing is donated, nor would it ever be (I assume)..

reply to post by JacKatMtn


Ive compiled together some more information on the whole process.


nanohub



Scale of possible applications/markets
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/af2bc099041f.jpg[/atsimg]

400 Billion Kg of scrap alloy that be utilized already. This technology could actually be fed off the already existing production of alluminum scrap waste.

There are many applications for which this technology could be used:

Small: 1-100 mW and 10 W-hrs, e.g. PDAs, laptops, i-pods, etc.
Medium: 1-200 kW and 10-10000 kW-hrs, e.g. auxiliary power, cars, boats, fuel enrichment, etc.
Large: >5000kW and > million kW-hrs, e.g. trains, ships, subs, off-grid community power, base load peak power demand, storage for wind and solar power.


Science Daily

The gallium component is inert, which means it can be recovered and reused.

As the alloy reacts with water, the aluminum turns into aluminum oxide, also called alumina, which can be recycled back into aluminum. The recycled aluminum would be less expensive than mining the metal, making the technology more competitive with other forms of energy production, Woodall said

researchers discovered that slowly cooling the molten alloy produced particles that contain 95 percent aluminum and 5 percent gallium [physorg.com]

"Particles made with this 95-5 alloy have good stability in dry air and react rapidly with water to form hydrogen,

Aluminum is refined from the raw mineral bauxite, which also contains gallium. Producing aluminum from bauxite results in waste gallium.

"This technology is feasible for commercial use," Woodall said. "The waste alumina can be recycled back into aluminum, and low-cost gallium is available as a waste product from companies that produce aluminum from the raw mineral bauxite.

The technology also could make it possible to introduce a non-polluting way to idle diesel trucks. Truck drivers idle their engines to keep power flowing to appliances and the heating and air conditioning systems while they are making deliveries or parked, but such idling causes air pollution, which has prompted several states to restrict the practice.
The new hydrogen technology could solve the truck-idling dilemma

The new hydrogen technology also would be well-suited for submarines because it does not emit toxic fumes and could be used in confined spaces without harming crew members, Woodall said

Fuel used by commercial trucks while idling

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/56dc05fa61ce.jpg[/atsimg]

Green Car Congress

Since standard industrial technology could be used to recycle our nearly pure alumina back to aluminum at 20 cents per pound, this technology would be competitive with gasoline. Using aluminum, it would cost $70 at wholesale prices to take a 350-mile trip with a mid-size car equipped with a standard internal combustion engine. That compares with $66 for gasoline at $3.30 per gallon. If we used a 50 percent efficient fuel cell, taking the same trip using aluminum would cost $28.

Valpo Life

Because waste produced in the process could be recycled using wind turbines and solar cells, the technology also represents a new way of storing energy from solar and wind power, he said.

Unlike other techniques for generating hydrogen using aluminum, the Purdue team uses bulk metal, not powdered aluminum.

"This is important because being able to generate hydrogen with bulk aluminum makes the method practical, whereas using powder is too expensive and cumbersome," Woodall said. "We believe the process is economically competitive with conventional fuels for transportation and power generation."

Physorg.org

The aluminum oxide is recycled back into aluminum using the currently preferred industrial process called the Hall-Héroult process, which produces one-third as much carbon dioxide as combusting gasoline in an engine," Woodall said

"After recycling both the aluminum oxide back to aluminum and the inert gallium-indium-tin alloy only 60 times, the cost of producing energy both as hydrogen and heat using the technology would be reduced to 10 cents per kilowatt hour, making it competitive with other energy technologies," Woodall said.

This in part due to the fact that after each cycle, the alloy becomes more mixed, and actually makes it more efficient. So by reusing and recycling the catalyst, we improve its performance.

reply to post by boncho


Its quite funny, I answered many of your questions with information from the links I posted. Maybe you should slow down, read more, think more... just saying

see my post above

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by boncho

 

Its quite funny, I answered many of your questions with information from the links I posted. Maybe you should slow down, read more, think more... just saying

see my post above

I'll look it over. If there is enough information in there (That quashes my concerns) I will change my mind. I like where you are pulling some of your sources from too.

reply to post by Scoriada


Hey Scoriada, you may want to read the rules of ATS where i believe your limited to one account.

I took notice of the account "thunderstorm" which seems to only post in threads that you post in, and somehow seems to defend you. Do you really need another account on ATS to defend yourself?

reply to post by VonDoomen

400 Billion Kg of scrap alloy that be utilized already. This technology could actually be fed off the already existing production of alluminum scrap waste.

To address the picture and the first few lines of your post I should first say that where you say:

400 Billion Kg of scrap alloy that be utilized already.

In the picture it says "elemental Al". Not alloy. Big difference.

And the first question that pops up is:

If there is 400 billion tons of scrap now... What is happening to it? If it is already being recycled, that means to run the power generation process you would need to divert the current supplies for recycling. Meaning that more Al would have to be smelted every year.

Will continue with the rest of your post shortly.

Originally posted by boncho

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by boncho

 

Its quite funny, I answered many of your questions with information from the links I posted. Maybe you should slow down, read more, think more... just saying

see my post above

I'll look it over. If there is enough information in there (That quashes my concerns) I will change my mind. I like where you are pulling some of your sources from too.

Of course, after going through your sources I am led back to THIS.

Which I believe to be the original source of this entire mess. It looks like a writer at the Purdue paper wrote and article on Woodall et al. And it was picked up by other media outlets.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a scientific paper backing any of the claims that have been made.

There is a reason no one has heard from these guys since 2007. The numbers he lists on his webpage are confusing. Only because he is not explaining why it is better. He is listing unneeded numbers and omitting ones that would show that this is a worthy process.

Of course, I assume there is a reason for this. But I don't feel like doing the math on it. [not good at math, takes me forever].

Just a glance over though, and I can see the numbers don't add. I'd put money on it.

reply to post by VonDoomen

Because waste produced in the process could be recycled using wind turbines and solar cells, the technology also represents a new way of storing energy from solar and wind power, he said.

Here, no crazy math needed. This is where the scheme falls apart




You see here he claims 4.4 kwh for both heat and Hydrogen creation.....

And that he says 12.9kwh of energy is needed to through electrolysis to change the alumina to Al.




He claims 68% efficiency!

Yes, 68% efficient after you already have the energy from another source! Meaning you are in an energy deficiency before you even start! HA!

(even if you get it from renewable's then you are just wasting energy)


This is no different than just using energy to produce hydrogen from electrolysis. Actually, this method is less efficient. Because he is calculating his efficiency while including HEAT production.

HEAT PRODUCTION!

You can't include that. Most people that look at combustion engines calculate that as waste. Meaning, in this person eyes, if you throw a pot of boiling water onto your engine block you made your car more efficient.


If you look at his h2 efficiency, (which he lists as 34%) that is a better indicator of his process.

This is all hogwash.

reply to post by boncho




to be more specific, i think the distinction was that they wouldn't need to mine extra ore. So that would remove that aspect during its infancy.