Did we just chance upon a source for clean fuel powered by water & aluminium?

Source: Getty

A team of researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland made a chance discovery when they poured water on a new aluminium alloy they were testing. It began to give off hydrogen immediately!

Exciting enough?

Well, let us rewind this recent ground-breaking discovery and allow it to sink in slowly as you read on.

Hydrogen stands at number one on the periodic table; it is the most abundant element in the Universe. It is found in the sun and most of the stars and the planet Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen. On Earth, Hydrogen is prevalent in the form of plenteously available chemical compounds such as hydrocarbons and water.

Some see hydrogen gas as the clean fuel of the future – generated from water and returning to water when it is oxidised. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are increasingly being seen as ‘pollution-free’ sources of energy and are now being used in some buses and cars.

Although clean and abundant, practically, it is difficult to transport it due to its extremely reactive nature. “The problem with hydrogen is always transportation and pressurisation,” says physicist Anit Giri. To circumvent this complication, Hydrogen can be produced, in situ, as a by-product in a reaction between water and regular aluminium, but only at extremely high temperatures or with added catalysts. Moreover, it would take hours for the hydrogen to be produced with an approaching efficiency of only about 50 percent.

When aluminium is exposed to water, it quickly oxidises forming a protective coating on the metal that puts a stop to any further reaction. But this alloy just kept reacting! The team had stumbled across the solution to a decades-old problem! Aluminium and water are stable can be transported easily. This can easily be turned into a situation where a lot of hydrogen can be produced on demand and that too quickly. This removes many issues that previously forced companies to seek alternatives to hydrogen for a clean energy source.

"Ours does it to nearly 100 per cent efficiency in less than 3 minutes," says team leader Scott Grendahl. Now that's a pretty impressive statistic, especially when you consider it's an automatic reaction. The new alloy, which the team is in the process of patenting, is made of a dense powder of micron-scale grains of aluminium and one or more other metals arranged in a particular nanostructure. Adding water to the mix produces aluminium oxide or hydroxide and lots of hydrogen. And their availability? Water from the oceans and aluminium from scrap! Moreover, for the same weight of lithium batteries, the new material offers a higher amount energy. Also, unlike batteries, it can remain stable and ready for use indefinitely.

But before we get too excited, as of now, there is a lot of research that needs to be done to scale it up. Firstly, the feasibility to recreate it outside the lab has to be checked. The cost effectiveness of mass production, environmental impact assessment and the quantity of raw material to sustain this needs to be explored. All said, this is an encouraging first step to be sure, but there's a lot more we need to know before we declare this the salvation of hydrogen fuel.

Sources:

• https://youtu.be/oAE407SjFPM
• https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/04/water-aluminum-create-hydrogen/
• https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142693-nano-aluminium-offers-fuel-cells-on-demand-just-add-water/