Hydrogen On Demand

Honda is going to be putting its FCX Clarity on lease in California this coming summer. As in a production ready (more or less) fuel cell car. That's right!

Now, right, you're thinking, big freakin' deal. Even if they rock how can they be sold anywhere else? There's no infrastructure to deliver the hydrogen!

True. Or it was. Maybe. Some long-haired learnin' dudes might have cracked it:

"We now have an economically viable process for producing hydrogen on-demand for vehicles, electrical generating stations and other applications," said Jerry Woodall, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who invented the process.

The new alloy contains 95 percent aluminum and 5 percent of an alloy that is made of the metals gallium, indium and tin. Because the new alloy contains significantly less of the more expensive gallium than previous forms of the alloy, hydrogen can be produced less expensively, he said.

When immersed in water, the alloy splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which immediately reacts with the aluminum to produce aluminum oxide, also called alumina, which can be recycled back into aluminum. Recycling aluminum from nearly pure alumina is less expensive than mining the aluminum-containing ore bauxite, making the technology more competitive with other forms of energy production, Woodall said.

Dude! On demand hydrogen production! On demand hydrogen production!

In unrelated news, Mr. Woodall has gone into hiding based on a hit being put on him by Exxon Mobil and BP and Texaco and...

Referenced articles:

From Physorg.com: New aluminum-rich alloy produces hydrogen on-demand for large-scale uses

Comments

[rich]

Milennium cell inc has been doing this for years with sodium borohydrate. They have contracts with the military and have set records of sustained opration in UAVs. They were at CES last year with product called (I think) hydropak. Which can supply up to 14 hours of continuous laptop power.

This guy invented ANOTHER method of hydrogen on demand. In fact, here's a little experiment for you. Take some drano (not too much, 1/4 up at most) some aluminum foil (sheet about the size of a piece of paper), wad the foil into balls, put the drano into a 1 liter pop bottle. Add the foil balls, and then add some water and shake it up. In about 5-10 the water will begin to break up at the molecular level. You can inflate a balloon or two, or three with the reaction, and impress your friends by lighting the baloon on fire. (poof, be careful)

Or you could go to home depot, and get some parts and make a nice little reactor out of some plumbing pipe and bubbler. Hook the whole thing up to your lawn mower, crack a beer and mow your lawn. :)

[raju]

Hi,
Nice and useful post about Hydrogen on Demand Using Aluminium & Gallium.

Have also given a link to it from my related post

Hydrogen on Demand Using Aluminium & Gallium.

Cheers

[Bill Hawley]

That is Hawesome. And the H stands for hydrogen!