Add water to an alloy of aluminum and gallium and hey presto! Hydrogen! India Today reports the process was developed by Purdue University Professor Jerry Woodall. It "reduces the protective properties of the aluminum oxide skin normally created on aluminium's surface after bonding with oxygen… The skin usually acts as a barrier, preventing oxygen from reacting with aluminium. But the new technology allows the reaction to continue until all of the aluminum is used to generate hydrogen." Woodall claims his process is cheap, practical and powerful enough to secure more research funding revolutionize our energy infrastructure. But give the guy credit: he also knows how to think small. "The golf cart of the future, three or four years from now, will have an aluminum-gallium alloy. You will add water to generate hydrogen either for an internal combustion engine or to operate a fuel cell that recharges a battery. The battery will then power an electric motor to drive the golf cart." Fore!
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Great, now we’ll be at the mercy of the OPEC-of-the-future aluminum cartels.
Besides, isn’t it somewhat environmentally nasty to make aluminum from bauxite?
My money is on the superbugs:
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.
http://news.com.com/Producing+hydrogen+with+water+and+a+little+metal/2100-11392_3-6184879.html
TaxedAndConfused:
I hope that’s nothing that can infect people…i like my water molecules as they are
They’ll probably succeed in making “Ice 9” instead of Hydrogen — Kurt Vonnegut will be proud.
An organism that reproduces its self and destroys water. That does not sound useful. Now all we need is the oxygen destroyer bomb from Godzilla (1954).
I thought [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_9]Ice 9[/url] was bad enough as just an idea.
I went to school with a guy who could produce hydrogen gas on demand. It had the optional sulfur atom attached.
Aluminum smelting and refining requires bauxite to be mined, usually from tropical regions like rainforests. Currently, the world’s “bauxite footprint” if you will is very small in that very little land is needed to supply the ore that the world demands. The messy part gets to the process of creating alumina and then later pure aluminum from bauxite. This process requires lots and lots of electrical energy as aluminum does not break its chemical bonds willingly. Aluminum refining also requires carbon rods to act as electrodes and during various chemical reactions, large amounts of our old friend carbon dioxide are generated. There is no free lunch and there is no free energy. Burning hydrogen produces a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide – dihydrogen monoxide, or as we know it, water vapor. If we blindly assume that the doomsday theories surrounding global climate change are correct, why to folks tout ideas that will only accelerate what they see as a problem?
This Woodall guy was on Science Friday back in June. You can listen to the interview in MP3 format here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/sciencefriday/scifri-2007060113.mp3
I can’t tell if it’s the solution to the world’s problems or a perpetual motion machine.
Why would anyone try to use aluminum as an energy source when it takes HUGE amounts of energy to make the aluminum. Why don’t we not waste our time with this and just use the energy that would be used to make the aluminum instead. Is he trying to find a way to drive up the price of already expensive aluminum. Stupidity U.
The amount of energy required to make a tankful of aluminum equals about the energy in 20 tanks of gasoline. Clearly this process is a waste of resources.
NICKNICK: I was kind of hoping I could turn the bugs squished onto my front number plate into energy…
Well said, Mr. Schwartz.
….but a very lucrative deal if you can con folks into believing (and bankrolling) it.