Clean Fuel Breakthrough Turns Water Into Hydrogen at Room Temperature

[Judi Lynn]

This discussion thread was locked by eppur_se_muova (a host of the Science group).

PHYSICS
31 August 2022
ByDAVID NIELD

Hydrogen fuel promises to be a clean and abundant source of energy in the future – as long as scientists can figure out ways to produce it practically and cheaply, and without fossil fuels.

A new study provides us with another promising step in that direction.

Scientists have described a relatively simple method involving aluminum nanoparticles that are able to strip the oxygen from water molecules and leave hydrogen gas.

The process yields large amounts of hydrogen, and it all works at room temperature.

That removes one of the big barriers to hydrogen fuel production: the large amounts of power required to produce it using existing methods.

This technique works with any kind of water, too, including wastewater and ocean water.

"We don't need any energy input, and it bubbles hydrogen like crazy," says materials scientist Scott Oliver from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/clean-fuel-breakthrough-turns-water-into-hydrogen-at-room-temperature

[Karadeniz]

1. So good to get promising news!!!

[intrepidity]

2. No energy input, he says?

Do the aluminum nanoparticles just magically appear?

[Ferrets are Cool]

3. Yes, very deceitful. Maybe "less energy input".

[JHB]

5. Apparently you can get the nanoparticles from simple manual mixing

Here's a press release closer to the source, and more technically oriented:

https://news.ucsc.edu/2022/02/hydrogen-production.html

For years, researchers have tried to find efficient and cost-effective ways to use aluminum’s reactivity to generate clean hydrogen fuel. A new study by researchers at UC Santa Cruz shows that an easily produced composite of gallium and aluminum creates aluminum nanoparticles that react rapidly with water at room temperature to yield large amounts of hydrogen. The gallium was easily recovered for reuse after the reaction, which yields 90% of the hydrogen that could theoretically be produced from reaction of all the aluminum in the composite.

“We don’t need any energy input, and it bubbles hydrogen like crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said UCSC Chemistry Professor Scott Oliver.

Oliver and Bakthan Singaram, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, are corresponding authors of a paper on the new findings, published February 14 in Applied Nano Materials.
***
In this gallium-rich composite, the gallium serves both to dissolve the aluminum oxide coating and to separate the aluminum into nanoparticles. “The gallium separates the nanoparticles and keeps them from aggregating into larger particles,” Singaram said. “People have struggled to make aluminum nanoparticles, and here we are producing them under normal atmospheric pressure and room temperature conditions.” Making the composite required nothing more than simple manual mixing. “Our method uses a small amount of aluminum, which ensures it all dissolves into the majority gallium as discrete nanoparticles,” Oliver said. “This generates a much larger amount of hydrogen, almost complete compared to the theoretical value based on the amount of aluminum. It also makes gallium recovery easier for reuse.”

The paper itself was published in ACS Applied Nano Materials, but as a peer-reviewed journal article it's not aimed at a general audience (and it's not open access, so there's a paywall for the main body of the paper).
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsanm.1c04331

[rubbersole]

4. Quick! Have the Koch's buy/bury the technology....

[hunter]

6. Um, it takes a lot of electricity and high temperatures to refine aluminum.

If you made an automobile powered by this stuff it would be a metallic aluminum powered car, not a water or hydrogen powered car.

The thermodynamics of this process are appallingly awful. Use this process to power a fuel cell and all you've really got is a remarkably inefficient aluminum battery.

This is some interesting chemistry here but not in the "hydrogen as a fuel" sense, which is a bad idea anyways.

If you've got the zero-carbon energy to make aluminum nanoparticles from aluminum ore, then you've also got the energy to make more conventional fuels out of atmospheric or oceanic carbon dioxide.

It's an unfortunate reality of modern science that people who don't even have a basic understanding of science control most of the money. It seems every research project has to be framed as a potential breakthrough in medicine, replacement for fossil fuels, etc., to receive funding.

[honest.abe]

8. It would be helpful for you to cite your statements as they conflict with what the article says.

Also the article mentions aluminum can be sourced from recycled materials.

[hunter]

11. In essence this system burns aluminum.

If we are burning up aluminum from our used soda cans in our cars instead of recycling them, where does the aluminum for new soda cans come from?

It's going to be refined from raw aluminum ore or the oxidized aluminum scraped out of these hypothetical aluminum powered cars.

[honest.abe]

7. This appears to be a major breakthrough.

Could pave the way for large scale hydrogen use as a fuel.

[NNadir]

9. Sorry but the laws of thermodynamics still apply.

In order for energy to be sustainable we need to discuss primary energy, which on this planet hydrogen is not and never will be.

These hydrogen fantasies this late in the game can only be described as dangerous, because they are a distraction from the fact that the planet is on fire, literally burning up. The repeated mantra of a hydrogen economy over the last half a century has done nothing to stop this outcome. The reason is physics.

[Farmer-Rick]

10. Gallium and aluminium?

Pure Gallium will melt in your hands if you hold it long enough.

But this below bodes well for reducing metal extraction costs and energy usage.

"It is easily obtained by smelting, however, and most commercial gallium is extracted as a byproduct of aluminum and zinc production."

https://www.livescience.com/29476-gallium.html

[eppur_se_muova]

12. This is 100% known chemistry, with a bullshit headline claiming "breakthrough".