Is This a Comercially Fesable Process?

[bustr]

Hydrogen production from water and aluminum gallium alloy. Anyone know if this has merit, or is this getting media play because of the push for alternative fuel sources? If this can be used in our current internal combustion engines with minor modifications, won't the increase of atmospheric H2O increase trapped green house heat?

http://www.physorg.com/news98556080.html

[soda72]

The reason this is so important is because gallium is currently a lot more expensive than aluminum. Hopefully, if this process is widely adopted, the gallium industry will respond by producing large quantities of the low-grade gallium required for our process. Currently, nearly all gallium is of high purity and used almost exclusively by the semiconductor industry

So what does 'a lot more expensive' mean?  Does that translate into being more expensive then $3.00 a gallon at the pump?

[eagl]

Just like the flaws in any hydrogen based power "generation" process, neither the hydrogen or the other materials required to make the thing work exists in nature so energy has to be expended to make it.  That means the whole setup is nothing more than another way to get energy from one place to another.  Or in other words, it's a fancy battery.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing since a really good battery would solve a lot of problems.  For example the amount of power lost over high power transmission lines is pretty high and even older low-efficiency solar panels (which are also really just fancy batteries) are quite reasonable in areas where power is hard to get, expensive, or there are local surges that make it worthwhile to collect your own energy.

However...

In this case, the power required to turn naturally occurring aluminum oxide into the form necessary for production of the device is rather high.  A quote from another website...

The problem with using aluminum to generate hydrogen is that less than half of the energy used to reduce the aluminum from its oxide can be extracted in a fuel cell. The standard electrode potential for aluminum is -1.68 V, for oxygen is +1.23V (both relative to hydrogen). Thus a hydrogen fuel cell can use 1.23/(1.23+1.68) or 42% of the energy originally used to create the aluminum. Actual results will be lower, of course.

I think that pretty much says it all.  The device can't be more efficient than any other 42% efficient energy conversion technology.  Yes, it's worth researching because like solar cells there may be ways to make the basic concept work better or with other materials that are more available, but it's not a silver bullet.

As for the amount of atmospheric H2O, if you wanted to reduce man-caused H2O emissions you'd have to kill just about every living creature on the planet because our basic metabolic processes "create" H2O as a primary byproduct.  It's how our bodies work, we eat food, drink water, and our bodies convert most of the energy extracted from the food into heat and water.

[majic]

I wouldn't think there would be enough water vapor created in mass use to cause any issues.  (There is a lot of water in the air already.)

Recycling the spent pellets could be handled by the places you purchase them from.  (I wonder if you need distilled water.)

Economically it seems a stretch from what they say.  I gotta believe there is a cheaper way to produce hydrogen (or more accurately there will be.)

Also, I wonder how a cars performance varies when running on hydrogen.

[eagl]

If I had to bet on what breakthrough would be required to make hydrogen production a viable option for power generation, I'd bet on some sort of engineered biological solution.  Like a genetically modified algae or some other sludge that would be able to cheaply convert sunlight and water into hydrogen.

Of course, we'd be in deep doo-doo if this sludge ever got out of control since I can't breath hydrogen very well in even mild concentrations, but maybe they can make the stuff not viable outside of a lab or environmentally controlled facility.  The possibility of a mutation would still remain though, and that's a bit freaky.

Still, I think some sort of bio process will be required to make hydrogen production cheap and "green" enough to make it a true source of energy instead of just an expensive way to transfer energy from one place to another.

[bustr]

Whats the energy conversion rate for 1gal of gasolene as opposed to this aluminum alloy method for hydrogen?

[Boroda]

Aluminum production is one of the most energy-consuming technological processes. You'll burn more electricity on producing aluminum then you'll get back. IIRC it's just another clever method of producing hydrogen instead of keeping it under pressure.

[CFYA]

Borada I would have to agree with that statement. In fact most aluminum production plants are nearby power producing facilities. Kryolite is also one of the key ingredents in the production of aluminum for which known supplies are not that vast. Increase production would put increase strain on these resources as well.

CFYA