1667 Aluminium Gallium And Hydrogen 

I always favored steam power from Fe-Al thermite, myself. Good video. Thanks

I just saw an article on this a couple of days ago and was really hoping you'd do a video about the process. :)

I think the more significant application with the 3:1 Ga:Al mixture isn’t the reaction byproduct of hydrogen, but the one of nanoparticle Al2O3. The Bayer process for making alumina contaminates the batch with sodium which is extremely difficult to completely wash back out…and even a minuscule amount of sodium contamination is a huge problem in alumina-based ceramics, where it acts as a glass-forming flux. Bayer alumina also requires a lot of heat input to dissolve each batch into the mother liquor and then flocculate the alumina from sodium aluminate, and the resultant alumina is an aluminum oxyhydroxide…which then has to have further high-heat input to calcine it into aluminum oxide. On top of all this, the particle sizes tend to be quite large and they agglomerate, which is not very useful for making mesoporous alumina active catalysts, thin films, molecular sieves, zeolites, bio-active microstructures, etc. Just about every other method of producing low- or no- sodium alumina relies on the use of some other toxic or destructive salt that gets released into the atmosphere or kiln walls during the calcination step (clorides, fluorides, or nitric, sulphuric, or boric acids, etc.) which otherwise makes low-soda alumina both very expensive and very environmentally destructive. …The gallium route, though: produces aluminum oxide directly, which is free from the typical sodium contamination, is of sub-micron nanometer-sized particle scale, and is already dehydroxylated - so you don’t have to calcine it. Plus, the gallium is recyclable over and over indefinitely. The entire process happens at ambient temp with no additional energy input. That’s super-exciting for ceramicists and chemists working on alumina catalysts for all kinds of alternative energy production and storage, biotech, and chemical engineering, even including selective atmospheric carbon sequestration.

Love your always well considered approach to things! Thanks Robert

What is the value of gallium and aluminum oxides or hydroxides after the fuel is spent? That would offset the cost of the fuel. Assuming a reasonable value for the left over products, and putting energy for transportation aside, how about aluminum gallium for home heating? Could that a viable method for seasonal energy storage considering net cost and volume needs. The exhaust of burning hydrogen is steam that would condense giving off heat in a heat exchanger. The condensed water than can be used to make more hydrogen from the aluminum gallium. I strongly suspect that if there becomes a market for aluminum gallium, that limited supplies of gallium will significantly limit the size of that market. It is a good thing that that aluminum gallium for energy is fully recyclable. Maybe a liquid aluminum sodium potasium alloy might work.

Awesome 👏 Love your chemistry classes

Nice video to come back from holiday to see !

Oh lord, I’m a CSE and I feel like I just walked into the wrong building. Hi Chemmies! I gotta give you all more credit cause this is pretty awesome. Even cooler seeing all of your follow up speculations that are in an entirely different language 🤣 I’m always fascinated by passionate experts, keyword: passionate. Great vid

Really appreciate the context around this news. Subscribed

Thnaks Robert, Cheers mate 🍺😊

As a small boy, 10-12 years old, there was an article in one of my schoolboy comics. This article described an experiment, where you put hot water and washing soda, (sodium carbonate), into a jar, and then dropped in an aluminium milk bottle top. The resultant gas given off was hydrogen. When a lighted spill was pushed into the gas, it exploded with a characteristic ''squeaky pop''! Great fun for a schoolboy! I've often wondered if this was combined with electrolysis, if it would release enough hydrogen, rapidly enough, to run an IC engine. .

If you did this, and had powdered aluminum oxide at the end, wouldn't that be a high purity ore for combining with energy from an intermittent source like a solar array or wind, for turning back into aluminum?

Good info as always.

You can use Gallium Indium Tin alloy (Or Galinstan) to amalgamate aluminum. Galinstan Aluminum Amalgam produces hydrogen. You can use more and more aluminum to make more Hydrogen. Galinstan is cheaper than pure Gallium and has a lower melting point too. The only problem is that there will be waste Aluminum hydroxide. But we have loads of Aluminum and water vapor doesn't harm the environment and comes back as rain. I don't know what could bring down Aluminum recovery costs. Aluminum Galinstan amalgam could be good for chemical synthesis such as reductions and reductive amination and is a non-toxic alternative to Aluminum mercury.

Thanks for that Robert, I had seen an article about it and I was going to ask you about it 🙂

Love your videos, always very informative and certainly puts things into perspective.

Just came across this video, And I'd like to make a couple observations that hopefully other viewers can comment on. 1. Does the Gallium/Aluminum alloy produce pure Hydrogen? Or HHO? If produces HHO, how do you separate out the O2? Hydrogen is 0.5 Angstrom and Oxygen is 1.4 Angstrom. 2. Scrap Aluminum at the scrap yard is reasonably cheap, however Aluminum is made with various alloying materials some of which can contaminate the reator. Certainly from a scrap yard it's going to be a collection of all types, how do you pick the right scrap? Just some thoughts to spark a discussion.

Patents on torpedo batteries using aluminium as a seawater battery with silver oxide electrode. Yes the ally stopped reaction with variable conc sodium hydroxide but the passivisation of the ally was helped by adding some tin compounds in the hydroxide. Was a Westinghouse patent years ago for torpedos so at least they reduced the passivisation problem of hydrogen bubbles on ally. Result use hydroxides with tin compounds

You can also use lye crystals and water to break down aluminum to produce hydrogen, generates a lot of heat .

This is where the fun begins

A 6ft tall 2ft sq Fresnel lenses could be a at home option for recycling aluminum

That Jamie Woodall photo at @2:07 really needs a "do not look into laser with remaining eye" logo on it. Sorry, couldn't resist

Ahh, I remember that Al wire and cylinder hydrogen generator. Must have been almost 20 years ago now. Good memories.

I think the unique factor is with using waste scrap aluminum. We all know that to get energy out you have to put it in. But with scrap the original use already paid for that energy input. this is offset by the cost of scrap but it usually is not very high. You could sell the aluminum oxide waste as a byproduct as well.

Great video as always, Rob!

Another great video Rob. Have you looked into electricity generation from hydrogen without a Platinum catalyst.

It's almost like energy in that aluminium represents a storage of energy from electricity. It was created from a mineral plus electricity. Now it can be degraded back down into that mineral again releasing it's energy.

Really be prudent with naoh and aluminium particle in a close environment where pressure building up chain reaction happen rapily and go our of control,very dangerous really take care

1:00 "..because it burbles on about nano-particles.."." nano particles are "The Darling of Particles ". Are they not?" - i had a good chuckle at that...😃 thanks

Not sure how I came across it as I wasn't looking for it specifically, but the other day I came across a string of papers talking about adding photocatalysts to aid in water splitting with solar. Everything seemed to be pretty straightforward, then I did the math when the charts looked rather, 'off'. Yeah, the efficiency is about 1%. Great idea, but you couldn't ever cover the costs of the base chemicals let alone be able to do any kind of bulk processing. Energy in=energy out!

It always comes back to "energy density". That is what inhibits Ethanol which is half the value of Gasoline.

You could use the energy produced to back refine the aluminum and gallium back to their elemental form. Of course the energy cost would be exactly the same as that produced assuming the process is 100 pecent efficient.

Do you need oxygen for aluminum to oxidize? If so, what happens under a vacuum where air is removed? Also is there a mechanical solution as opposed to a chemical one? Also when reacting with water is oxygen also released in addition to the hydrogen?

Aluminium is far more useful as anything other than dissolving to make hydrogen.

Hello!!! Always interesting videos !! I think you are right for mass production but imagine to build a simple chamber with some pressure relief valves and a fridge compressor with a tank or maybe just a balloon filling itself... Anyway... Then go outside find 2-3 trash coke cans collect them and cook your food on a hydrogen stove .. why not??? I just find your next diy video... 🤪 Cheers i like your content so much...😎

There is something I do not understand from your video. When you mix AlGa alloy with water to produce hidrogen does the aluminium or gallium "consume" in any way? Meaning is it a chemical reaction taking place? I am asking this because there was an alloy back in the '50 that produced hidrogen but didn't react in any chemical way and it had the same aluminium at the begining and at the end of hidrogen production.

Yes, all aluminium smelters are in places with cheap electrical power, so Canada by the Niagara Falls, Iceland with geothermal power, South Africa with low cost coal and China, with low cost coal and hydro power. None of them are near the mines, so all of the ore is shipped there to be smelted. the aluminium battery is great in principle, but the cost of recharging it, seeing as your hydroxide is not exactly suitable for the smelter straight off, and you will have a pretty big loss in this cycle. Then you get less than a quarter of the energy that went into the refinery back making hydrogen, and then further whatever you use to convert it to power will be at best 30% efficient. Probably will be less pollution to simply take the coal, turn it into a fine powder powder, mix with water, and burn in an engine in that case, with at least getting more energy out of the fuel.

Could it work with magnesium? Maybe even berillyum but it's toxic

The Langmuir's HYDROGEN heat pump reduce perfectly and cheap hydroxides!

don't know why they are so keen in using extra stuff materials for producing H2. the H2 must be obtained from Sun energy with electrolysis principle. maybe not so effective but is 99.9% planet friendly.

nano particulars oh brother they act like it`s a new level of science only found via the Narnia doorway {portal}or something silly . Robert cheers to me if they really thought it was environment propane or its sister gas would be used one can run a 14:1 compression or turbo engine at crazy power level of it to.and it does not make a bunch of nasty fumes

The problem is even if it was successful it will drive the demand for Aluminium up along with the price of Aluminium not a good thing.

When you use a scour pad in an aluminum container filled with water, why is there no apparent reaction? Wouldn't you be removing the oxidized layer from that mechanical process? Pretty sure if it did react people would have noticed. Or perhaps the reaction is so subtle and fast (before it re-oxydizes) you can't see with the naked eye?

I made a zinc iodide battery and I get 1.24 volts out of it, after I deplete it ice noticed over time it returns to 1.24 by itself

Petroleum is here to stay Just a bump in the road

the u.s. army has a cheaper nanogalvanic aluminium powder made at ARL labs in Aberdeen, Maryland

The cheapest gas I bought was 19 cents around 1970 in Washington state.

Robert can we look at liquid metal batteries again?👍

I got 3 pool chlorine generators any gold ideas for a use for them?

Wonder what an aluminum gallium battery would look like?

Yes there is hydrogen but there's also aluminum oxide I believe gas in there so this would not be good to be putting in certain applications. Also getting a gas micrometer test would prove out that it's not a high quality hydrogen.

Have you heard of LTO batteries? Think its lithium titanium oxide??

On a different video I commented on the dangers of using hydrogen as a fuel. What you get when you burn hydrogen is steam which will greatly increase the amount of water in the atmosphere, which is many times more effective than carbon dioxide in increasing global warming. Also, as things are we have severe water shortages worldwide and breaking down water for fuel will only exacerbate that problem. It is possible that we could figure out a way to balance pulling the water from the atmosphere to produce hydrogen with the water going back into the atmosphere from the steam produced from hydrogen engines. However, that would require strong regulation on how much hydrogen each person would be allowed to burn. As I said in that other comment, burning hydrogen as a fuel is a very bad idea.

Never knew about this. Interesting. Have question about contest video entry. Video is 121 meg, too big for gmail. If I threw it up on RU-vid, and gave you the link, can that work? I am at a loss on how to get the file to you. I was against trying some file reduction for the video because it may degrade an already sketchy video as is. Time is almost out.. : I

Gallium prices 📈

The amount of electricity required to produce aluminum is insane

Yes, the recovery angle is the sticky bit. With Hydrogen power, there always seems to be a sticky bit. When we finally solve the cradle to grave issues around efficiency, pollution and real world re-use, Hydrogen will be a winner. By then, though, we might all be fully converted to battery power anyway. Hydrogen power is coming second in this race and there's nothing on the horizon at present suggesting it can get a leg up and beat battery power, especially as battery power seems to be a lot more innovative recently.

I just don't think Hydrogen is going to go anywhere because its just so hard to store Hydrogen safely in the long term. I guess, the Borate method seems promising... I am just waiting for it to actually become a product.

Hi Robert excuse my English

There's not that much aluminum compared to gasoline or crude. And you won't be getting that aluminum back via recycling. Now if you need to get a car working post apocalyptic situations than it's a viable option. Otherwise not so much.

Gas is _"Cheaper"_ -sure when we're calculating expenses by measuring aluminum by mined product. But we all already have loads of aluminum remember? That was the basis off of the whole _"back to the future II"_ theme. I myself have loads of aluminum cans. And they are constantly a burden to get rid of. I wish I could just throw it in my gas tank, you know? Cut out the twenty or so middle men that siphon out my pockets as I turn in my cans and then buy fuel at the gas station.

Just watched another video which showed a company that extracts CO2 from air and combines it with water with the Oxygen having been removed from both to create hydrocarbon fuel. All done using green energy sources (solar and wind).

Boop

Silly man, dont you realize the hydrogen from the aluminium comes from the process it went through when it was made, you cant get out more than you put in! so the metal really is just a storing method of energy