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Purdue University professor Jerry Woodall has discovered a way to make hydrogen out of a reaction of water and an alloy of aluminum and gallium. The production technique eliminates the need to store hydrogen, he said. Mixing water and pellets made up of the alloy in a tank can produce fuel for a small engine, or conceivably a car.
The process, along with other recent hydrogen developments, could work to dispel some of the criticism of hydrogen as a fuel source in the coming decades. Although it's the most abundant element in the universe, producing hydrogen for commercial applications is expensive and generates greenhouse gases. Prototype hydrogen-fuel-cell cars also run close to a million dollars. Proponents, including some researchers at national labs, believe that if cheap, nonpolluting production methods can be achieved, hydrogen power might make its way into some types of motors.
Aluminum has a strong urge to react with oxygen, which is why aluminum is an accelerant in rocket fuel. The aluminum thus extracts the oxygen from water and frees up hydrogen from the water molecule.
In ordinary circumstances, a skin would form over the aluminum, preventing further reactions.
The Purdue Research Foundation holds title to the primary patent, which has been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and is pending. An Indiana start-up company, AlGalCo, is licensing the patent and will try to commercialize the idea.
Woodall estimates that the technique could produce fuel that would compete with gas at $3 a gallon (assuming current prices for aluminum, which are above $1 a pound). The actual fuel would be more expensive, but because hydrogen engines are more efficient, the cost difference would dissipate.
Woodall discovered that hydrogen could be produced out of water, aluminum and gallium while working in the semiconductor industry in 1967. Woodall, some students and AlGalCo are now trying to refine the process for manufacturing.
"I was cleaning a crucible containing liquid alloys of gallium and aluminum. When I added water to this alloy--talk about a discovery--there was a violent poof. I went to my office and worked out the reaction in a couple of hours to figure out what had happened. When aluminum atoms in the liquid alloy come into contact with water, they react, splitting the water and producing hydrogen and aluminum oxide," he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, others are working on hydrogen solutions, too. Ecotality has come up with a way to produce hydrogen with magnesium oxide pellets, while New York's Signa Chemistry says it can pull hydrogen out a reaction from sodium, water and silicon.
Stanford University professor James Swartz, by contrast, has found a microorganism that takes sunlight and splits water molecules. Swartz's work has generated a start-up called Fundamental Applied Biology.
Fuel cell makers are also trying to come up with vehicles that can be powered by aluminum. Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies recently showed how hydrogen can power small, unmanned aerial vehicles. Daimler Chrysler says it will soon come out with a new prototype hydrogen can and that hydrogen cars will be on the road in the 2012 to 2015 time frame.
Still, many doubt that hydrogen will ever play a role in the U.S. energy infrastructure. At the Clean Energy Venture Summit, James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA and currently an alternative energy advocate, received a standing ovation when he said hydrogen research was a distraction and largely a waste of time. Instead, he, among others, favor alternative transportation concepts like plug-in hybrids or clean diesel.
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Probably one of the only ways that hydrogen will ever become an environmentally-friendly fuel would be if a non-polluting source of electricity is used - either to directly produce hydrogen from water, or for recycling the reducing agent (such as the aluminum in this system).
Nuclear, Zero co2 emissions, is even hated by environMentals... not that co2 matters anyway, what with Water vapor being the number 1 greenhouse gas (by a long shot).. so why do you want to put h20 into the atmosphere?
with electrolyzing water itself, then it might not be worth doing.
However, barring that, the energy involved in processing the
aluminum oxide back into aluminum might be about equal to that
required to separate the hydrogen from water and incorporate it
into the aluminum, which you would get back when oxidizing the
hydrogen in the power production part of the process. Anybody
know?
The other motivation is equally important: reducing our dependence on oil. oil is an extremely finite resource. Hydrogen, while not infinite, approaches what could be reasonably considered to be an unlimited supply.
If this could become reality, and it does not nothing to reduce pollutants, we are still considerably better off then we are now.
What do you think is going to happen if the oil runs out and there is not a viable, sustainable alternative?
We are a solution away from cheap electricity. Question: If electricity were very cheap and abundant, would that remove the primary argument against Hydrogen? If so, potential solution ...use existing technologies and mass production to manufacture many wave power generators to convert mechanical to electrical energy. The oceans are an endless source of mechanical energy. Thoughts?
Microbe/water filled solar collectors giving off hydrogen sounds
like a simpler, perhaps more efficient process than the others here.
Just think about those lovely northern winters (sorry I'm late boss, I had to defrost the fuel tank) which means a source of heat is going to be needed or there will have to be an antifreeze added that won't react with the metal.
It's a lovely sounding idea but there are also a lot of possible problems.
RFB
One little problem, With thousands of hydrogen cars in rush/stop
hour traffic and H2O out of the tail pipe, When the ambiant
temperature is below 32F, BLACK ICE with car crashes everywhere!
Am I correct any northern roads will be covered in black ice?
approximately two hydrogen atoms for each carbon atom,
oxidizing them gives you approximately equal parts CO2 and
H2O, although by mass it would be more like 70/30 CO2 to
H2O. So, if emitted in gaseous form, the same energy
production would most likely give you more H2O for pure H2
combustion. However, in a fuel cell I believe the reaction product
is liquid water so it could be stored in a tank. Plus, I think the
conversion efficiency is a lot higher than for combustion so not
as much would be produced.
Anybody know more about this?
Why not use the things we have at hand to solve this problem?
For example, an electric car is a great idea - but the batteries are heavy, need specail rechargers that just aren't available everywhere and are slow to recharge. So, ditch the damned battery!
Every major road has power lines nearby. Why not place the equivilent of metal "strips" on the road and let electric cars suck up the electricity right off the road? Like subway cars do now.
You'd have to cover them for safety somehow - or simply beam the electricity from the road surface to the cars. These solutions exist now, have been one for years in subway cars and are relatively inexpensive to develop on a large scale.
The cars would still need batteries for driving where the road had no built in power, but those batteries coudl be smaller and would be replenished simply by driving on a powered road.
Electric meters in the vehicles (or a general tax) could pay for the power used by the vehicles and for grid maintenance.
Stop dreaming about electric vehicles and let's get to work!
And fuel cells are out of the question. And where is this aluminum going to come from and what happens to the residue? And when will fuel cells cost less than $1 million dollars? And why not use electricity instead, at between 25 and 50 cents a gallon? This discovery means less than nothing.
development. In the scheme outlined in this article, aluminum
would be oxidized in the liberation of hydrogen from water, and
would in turn be liberated from the oxygen electrically the same
way aluminum is produced from aluminum oxide ore now. The
gallium just serves to keep the aluminum in a liquid state so all of
it can be easily explosed to oxidation. The only questions would be
ones of efficiency and of course cost. The the necessry parts of the
process already work.
many homemade explosives are based on powdered aluminum, you can get "free" heat by adding lye to aluminum chips (careful it melts skin)
free electricity: aluminum pole on ordinary chemical battery.
none of this is "FREE" you paid for the aluminum when you bought 3 cents worth of sugar water (pluse some phosphoric acid to etch your teeth and give tooth decay a headstart) for a dollar.
Oil is EXPENSIVE for the oil companies to get and people complain every time the price goes up. If they could get the same energy for 1/4 of the cost and sell it for 25% less than other forms of energy they would make a killing!
Face it, the existing oil and energy companies are the ONLY ones well positioned to take advantage of any new forms of energy. That is why they are the ones doing BY FAR the most research and development in REAL and practical sources of energy, unlike those people designing "Air cars" which only seem to get good gas mileage because it uses a 25hp engines. A car with a 25hp gasoline engine and a super-lightweight chassis that won't pass any safety standards can easily get well over 100mpg.
- 1957 Chemalloy
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by bssouth17
May 29, 2007 7:52 AM PDT
- In 1957 a Dr. Freedman patented a metal alloy called chemalloy, which spontaneously breaks water into hydrogen and oxygen with no outside electrical input. Sound familiar? This is a promising concept, however it causes a chemical reaction which changes the metal alloy. This is the same problem they have today. There is only one way to produce hydrogen efficiently and I am currently still working on it.
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