INSTANT HYDROGEN ?

All Gallium Is Not Divided Into Three  Parts

Schemes for  conquering climate change by substituting hydrogen for carbon stand or fall on where the hydrogen is to  come from   ?  Everything from solar cell photolysis to hydroelectricity and geothermal power  figures in future tense  hydrogen evangelism, but in the real world it comes cheaply only from natural gas or coal -- which utterly obviates the point of  using hydrogen to reduce CO2 emissions.

This is old hat- so to revive interest , a Perdue  professor is publicizing  a seemingly   cheap and easy way to generate hydrogen. Based on aluminum, It looks carbon free on first glance. Many reactive metals liberate hydrogen from water, but those reactions can be spectacularly energetic. Tossing one pound ingots of sodium into Essex Bay  was my own  preferred ( and widely applauded )  4th of July fireworks finale until liability lawyers, the EPA , and the post-9/11 aversion to things that go bang   banished  such instant pyrotechnics from the marketplace.

Aluminum is potentially just as reactive- mixed with granulated rust and ignited , it yields white hot molten iron. Yet  aluminum foil is non-flammable, because a tenacious oxide layer coats the metal, preventing runaway reaction with air or water. If disrupted, say by amalgamating an aluminum bar's  surface with mercury, the light metal reacts on contact with water ,  releasing a hissing froth of hydrogen bubbles.

But mercury too has succumbed to a sort of paranoia--it has vanished from medicine ,and  a whole cottage industry seeks to ban it from light bulbs and switches as well. So what other low melting metal can  turn normally passive aluminum into a well behaved hydrogen source ?

Chemically speaking , non-toxic gallium is to aluminum as silicon is to carbon-  lower melting and heavier. But while silicon is common as sand and dirt cheap, gallium is as rare and expensive byproduct of processing aluminum ore. Useful  in semiconductors, its high price reflects the huge energy cost of concentrating it - bauxite contains roughly  only 1 atom of gallium    per million of aluminum.Yet Galliu is thre for the taking,, as common as copper in the rocks of the Eart'scrust, and enough to enable a hydrogen car would coust little more than the platinum melts in the catalytic converter  of  a truck engine  Because though melts in the palm of your hand , just a small percentage added to aluminum  yields a crystalline alloy , GaAl28 suitable for hydrogen generation.

GaAl28 is being hyped along the lines of  :

 Instant Hydrogen -- Just Add Water .

But first you need some aluminum- and aluminum takes a lot of electricity to make . Since 51% of America's electricity comes from coal , that half of the energy economy is off limits from a Green Hydrogen perspective. Note that LA is especially dependent-  a coal-fired Prius  is not what California Greens have in mind.   But  much imported  aluminum embodies  hydro-electricity  from Norway   or Canada , so can't we  celebrate  this new found route to clean green internal combustion? Surely the white soup of  gallium spiked Milk of Alumina that would remain in the former gasoline  tanks of our hydrogen cars could be endlessly recycled back to the dams and nuclear electric plants whence the  fuel-metal came ? 

Not so fast. Gallium does more to aluminum than facilitate hydrolyzing it into hydrogen. Since gallium  melts in the palm of your hand, the silvery stuff can be slapped on to anything made of aluminum- an airplane say, or an engine block . It wicks into the grain boundaries of structural aluminum alloys like hot water being sucked into a sugar cube.  And behold, the stuff just falls apart. Give an aluminum baseball bat a dab of gallium , and a girl scout can break it with a karate chop.

Long before The Transportation Safety  Authority  arose , the FAA  enacted a ferocious ban on air transport of gallium , and as  energy conservation  leads to ever greater use of light aluminum alloys in  vehicles for land sea and air , the gallium solution to the hydrogen conundrum  must overcome more than its already parlous enegy economics

Comments

[Tim Worstall]

There is a (possibly apocryphal) story of some ill packed Ga sitting in the hold of a plane on the runway in Moscow in summer, flight delayed. Over 25 oC, so the Ga melts, leaks out of the packaging, leading to an embarrassing hole in the floor of the plane before take off.

[Online Pharmacies]

Scientists must do everything to bring as little harm to the environment as possible.

[Angela (phg)]

How long would it take for the government to get on board?

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[Joshua's Law Online Course]

After years long research & development we are still unable to use this as a fuel, we have more concerns about producing, processing, storing, filling the hydrogen at different places which need to be addressed before implementing anything so may be hydrogen is the our future fuel but not very soon it's needs a lot of time & work need to be done.

[Health News]

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[Nevada Learners Permit]

Hydrogen fuel still a long way to go, before we utilize this as a regular fuel for our vehicles, which need much of investment, development in all segments