Eureka! Purdue scientists turn water into hydrogen

The fuel cell-powered Honda FCX

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In what looks like an example of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Purdue University in Indiana have come up with a way of turning water in hydrogen using an aluminum alloy. If the process is replicable on a large scale, it could have a massive impact on the market for hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars, which could use the technology as a source of onboard hydrogen generation.

The process relies on the use of aluminum pellets, which are mixed into liquid gallium (a metal that liquefies at just over room temperature) to produce a liquid aluminum-gallium. When water is added to the compound, the aluminum reacts with the oxygen to form a gel along with free-standing hydrogen, which can be collected and used to power a fuel cell. According to EDN, an Indiana-based start-up already has a license to commercialize the technology.

Many of the major automakers, including Honda, and General Motors, have invested heavily in developing fuel cell-powered cars. However, to date hydrogen has faced significant obstacles to becoming a viable alternative to gasoline, principally the expensive (and often carbon-fueled) process of isolating it, and the lack of a fueling infrastructure. The Purdue development has the potential to address both of these issues.

The Purdue announcement is the latest development in the race to create sustainable, on-demand sources of hydrogen. Earlier this year, a start-up company called Ecotality announced that it had enlisted the help of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop an advanced hydrogen-production process using magnesium and water.

Via EDN

[cquebral]

This is great if....

...Big Oil giants don't kill it. Trust me, they are about to strike this. And our gov't representatives think that we're fools. Everytime gas goes up, they try to investigate price gouging just to calm people and show that they're doing something.<br /><br />They think we have the option to reduce our dependence on oil. But some of us who can't live closer to the city because it's expensive have to drive to work. Try to take the train and you'll see that it's FULL and there's not enough out there to meet the demand right now.<br /><br />We'll just have to wait and see.

[KeatonTech]

Great, now to see how bush messes it up...

I really hope this technology gets somewhere, the problem is it'll probably need some major funding from the government, and mr. bush is having too much fun killing people in Iraq to care about saving the planet from a hot, grey, deathly future. I'm sorry for those of you who disagree, it just had to be said...

[eglazier]

hydrogen for autos

we already can produce massive amounts of hydrogen by electrolysis of water. the electricity can be supplied by a nonpolluting nuclear plant , if the country would get up off its dead ass and push back the hysteria that surrounds the idea. the real problem is how to transport hydrogenand store it both at depots and in the car. these are problems that will take far more work that has even been thought of to present. i am not sure i see the problem being solved for a rather longer time than we might have, though i have always felt that when survival is at stake, man will solve any problem somehow.<br />two further benefits from this kind of production of hydrogen. we will produce great amounts of oxygen if we produce enough hydrogen to run autos. we can feed that back into the atmosphere. it can't hurt.<br />also nuclear plants yield a large amopunt of excess heat, which we can use to distill water and feed into our drinking supply. this was one of the original ideas used to promote nuclear energy plants, but it somehow got lost along the way

[hartiberlin]

Hydogen on demand from water,even a better process

Hi,<br />there is even a better process to get Hydrogen from water with the Dr. Linnard Griffin catalystic process.<br />You only need a few metals, that work as a catalyst and<br />get free hydrogen from water. The calatyst is not consumed !<br />Also you don´t need to recycle anything !<br />Have a look at:<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,518.0.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,518.0.html</a><br /><br />Regards, Stefan.<br />admin of www.overunity.com

[pikmee]

hydrogen from water---for free ?

Just because this process uses a catalyst to cleave the h2o molecules, we can't say this doesn't require an energy INPUT to carry it out. Hydrogen and oxygen have more chemical energy than water . That means using electricity or some other energy source .

[JohnMcGrew]

This would be great...

...if we had an unlimited supply of cheap aluminum. Unfortunately, it takes a vast amount of electricity to convert aluminum ore into metal. Where will that energy come from?

[Kenfrmcal]

Enough with the Hydrogen already!

Gallium!?? The stuff is highly poisonous! Aluminum takes huge amounts of electricity to produce. And then you have the toxic waste to contend with. Hydrogen is just not worth it! NO infrastructure for producing, transporting or storing it = $$$$$BILLIONS to get all that in place. The stuff is EXPLOSIVE. Can you imagine a refinery sized tank of liquid hydrogen going off?! Think small nuclear explosion. Not to mention sitting on a tank of it in your car! AND it still produces heat when it's utilized in a power source. Just what we need...more heat in the world. I want to know who is shoving this technology down our throats? So what about solar produced electricity? It's clean, simple, quiet, almost anything can be powered by it, it doesn't polute or produce much heat. And we have the ifrastructure in place to transport it. Let sink a few bucks into battery technology and it would be perfect. THINK ABOUT IT!!!

[hartiberlin]

drive your car on water !hdrogen on demand is here

Forget the Gallium based technology, where you have to recycle the Aluminiumoxid !<br />The Dr. Griffin technology is the real watercar technology,<br />the hydrogen on demand technology we have all been waiting for !<br />It is just the REAL breakthrough ! See:<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=11039" target="_newWindow">http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=11039</a><br />Only water is consumed and splitted into HHO !<br />No electricity needed !<br />Have a look at the videos in my forum:<br /><a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,518.0.html" target="_newWindow">http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,518.0.html</a><br /><br />Regards, Stefan.

[Visualdude]

When do we get the O2 back?

As someone else stated, now you've got this gel by-product to recycle, and since we've just taken the water from the planet, we'd better at least release the O2, so that it can hopefully recombine with some naturally produced hydrogen, or we'll find ourselves needing to spend energy desalinating the oceans for water.<br /> Then there's the energy for processing the metals and the toxicity of the metals, which rather than being confined to industrial areas, is traveling around in cars waiting for an accident to spill and pollute.

[bassboat8]

hydrogen for GM

I see that the naysayers have their atypical negative attitude. Perhaps they <br />should get off their duffs and try to help rather than hinder. Their type are not <br />what made America great and never will. And don't give me that save the planet <br />garbage, that is more egotistical than most can bear. A negative person will <br />never accomplish anything except hollow criticism. Kudos to those at Purdue. <br />Keep it up!!!

[Natlaw]

It's the Sun, my friends...

I'm not a believer in any significant human contributions to global warming (it's a natural cycle, clearly shown by abundant evidence in the fossil record), so the whole "green" impetus for the alternative fuel movement is superfluous to me. However, while the news from Purdue is nice, we need a solution which doesn't consume other energy sources, ultimately to cut back or altogether deny massive funds going to the Middle East. This is my reason for being fired up about alternative fuels - to deny terrorists funding.<br /><br />Therefore, in my view, what we need to do is focus first on more productive ways to harvest photoelectric power from the sun. Right now our solar panels collect very little energy from a given ray of light from the sun. We need to open that up to a wider electromagnetic spectrum such that we can harvest more electromotive force from a smaller area of exposed collector.<br /><br />What this will allow is the development of home-based hydrogen plants which can collect rain water, filter it, then use solar power to perform hydrolosis thus separating the Hydrogen therein for collection while releasing the Oxygen into the atmostphere. Think of it as a sort of "liquid battery" system where we use hydrogen as an asynchronous state for solar energy utilization. This can then be used in any fuel cell, be that in a conveyance like a fuel cell car or even fuel cells made for residential power usage.<br /><br />At the end of the day no fossil fuels are used, which means less money going to the Middle East to pay for people to stand around and collect a government check, giving them all day long to work themselves into a Jihadist frenzy.

[orthacs]

I have to agree global warming is a natural cycle it happened earlier in the world's lifetime and they were actually able to grow wine grapes in southern europe and inhabit greenland because of it and it all happened before the industrial age. <br /> <br />There is also the way to make hydrogen by using a negative and positive electric current through water to seperate the water molecules making HHO or Browns Gas. This is called electrolysis and is used in many hydrogen fuel cell powered cars that people have made themselves who were mere farmers not scientists and did not even attend college. <br /> <br />Electrolysis is an easy to understand subject and easy to do that anyone can do it and many have. It just goes to show if we try we can do anything.