Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Army scientists and engineers recently made a groundbreaking discovery -- an aluminum nanomaterial of their design produces high amounts of energy when it comes in contact with water, or with any liquid containing water.
During routine materials experimentation at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, a team of researchers observed a bubbling reaction when adding water to a nano-galvanic aluminum-based powder.
"We all as a team were very excited and ecstatic that something good had happened," said Dr. Anit Giri, a physicist with the lab's Weapons and Materials Research Directorate.
The team further investigated and found that water -- two molecules[sic] of hydrogen and one of oxygen -- splits apart when coming into contact with their unique aluminum nanomaterial.
The reaction surprised the researchers, but they soon considered its potential implications for future power and energy applications.
Source: https://www.army.mil/article/191212/army_discovery_may_offer_new_energy_source
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:25AM (4 children)
Is the aluminum nanomaterial a catalyst for the reaction which by standard chemistry should be endothermic?
How much energy input to make the material per energy output when reacting the aluminum nanomaterial does it take?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:47AM (3 children)
This is not an "energy source", just an exothermic chemical reaction. Might as well use thermite.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:54AM
That just leaves one question.. how much it costs to make or buy..
Kind of essential for stuff that is one time use ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:39AM (1 child)
or nano-thermite [ae911truth.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 14 2017, @03:56AM
I smell "coincidence"..
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:35AM (7 children)
Let's go atomic.
Kilo-whats? Kilojoules?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:56AM (2 children)
kWh I suspect, but bad reporting is bad
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @02:09AM (1 child)
KiloWattSeconds, so on par with one of my post-burrito farts.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:00AM
You're not supposed to eat the aluminum foil too, dammit.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:56AM (3 children)
220 kW during 3 minutes = 220e3 * 3*60 [watt*seconds] = 39.6 MJ
(on the order of the combustion of 1 cubic meter of natural gas)
So: 39.6 MJ/kg
Using 9 kg with 100% power conversion efficiency it will be sufficient to replace the battery in a 100 kWh (=539 km) Tesla Model S. If a sterling engine with 20% efficiency is used for conversion then something like 45 kg of the aluminum nanomaterial will be needed.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:19AM (2 children)
So, is the aluminum captured/recyclable after this reaction - if so, 9kg of "fuel" isn't bad for 210 miles of travel - of course, there's a lot of water required, too...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:31AM (1 child)
Actually the driver contains pee so.. ;-)
No one has written anything here on whether the aluminum nanomaterial is a catalytic or a reactant.
On a more serious note maybe the water + nitrates in which the later tend to be exothermic could be used to power something using a catalytic reaction?
Ie pee + catalytic = electrical power.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:29PM
Of course it's a reagent. This invention is similar to sodium hydride hydrogen source (where you pour water on NaH to get hydrogen for fuel cell). Fraudnewsters called it as stuff to make water powered cars but requiring sodium hydride as "catalyst". Something tells me this "nanomaterial" is AlH3 and is exactly same type of deal, it could be of use if AlH3 happened to be cheaper or more stable than NaH.
While we're at it most internal combustion are air powered but need tiny amounts of gasoline as catalyst. wink wink
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:03AM (1 child)
Or something else?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:29AM
Cold Fusion lives! Them Mormons were right! Hallelujah and pass the wives!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:29AM (10 children)
The air is full of electricity. Positive and negative potential fluctuates over any given area, just like temperature, barometric pressure, humidity,etc. We just have to learn to harvest it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:48AM (3 children)
I spent six years in engineering school to explain with the following:
"No."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @05:35AM (2 children)
You wasted your money.. Build a thousand foot ball of dense steel wool, isolate it from the ground and measure the voltage. Don't stand too close!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @08:56PM (1 child)
Don't stand too close, or you'll be crushed by a thousand-foot ball of steel wool collapsing under its own weight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @09:12PM
It will have carbon fiber scaffolding inside in a kind of a geodesic fashion.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:58AM (5 children)
You'll probable refer to vacuum fluctuations?
The problem is that in many cases it ends up with something akin to Maxwell's daemon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:12AM (4 children)
Not even close... I'm referring to electrical potential. The air is full of it. We can harvest it with no moving parts using a full wave rectifier and a giant ball of steel wool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:22AM (3 children)
When the air gets full of electric potential, you get lightning. Those are a bit difficult to harvest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:44AM
Think static wick in reverse, concentrating a dispersed electrical charge. Whether there is lightning or not, there are always varying levels of potential in the air. If you could see it, it would look just the planetary auroras.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @09:00PM
Pay attention to historical society flyers to best harvest lightning. Usually results in 1.21 GW.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @12:01PM
I believe it could be done. Surround a lightning rod with a large toroid coil (a.k.a. make a huge current transformer) and use the transformed-down current from the coil to load a battery of high voltage capacitors to store the energy.
On second thought, coupling lightning rod with an inductive load would increase its impedance, so the discharge would probably get shunted with secondary lightnings from the top of the rod to the ground. And if it would hit the ground inside the area surrounded with toroidal secondary, it too would get quenched, lightning would probably split even higher up, roughly half of discharge current would pass through discharge paths beyond the outer side of toroid, balancing the current on the inside and resulting in approximately no induced current in toroid.
I guess one can never win against the forces of nature, but still, I think that would make an awesome experiment ...
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:16AM (5 children)
The article is written really poorly - clearly, the author doesn't know much about chemistry. However, two comments in the article lead to understanding: This does not require an external energy source, and "does not require a catalyst".
Aluminum really wants to oxidize. Expose aluminum to air, and this happens essentially immediately. However, aluminum oxide forms an impenetrable barrier, and is transparent, so there's nothing to see. Every piece of aluminum that you see is coated with oxide. Aluminum is also perfectly capable of ripping oxygen atoms out of water molecules, but again, that oxide coating. These folk have a nanostructured aluminum material. Likely, this means that the structure is so fine that the oxide cannot protect the aluminum. So much more of the aluminum is exposed to water.
tl;dr: They are almost certainly generating hydrogen by oxidizing aluminum. There are already fuel cells that do exactly this. There's no energy gain, because you invested masses of energy in getting metallic aluminum in the first place. Whoopie...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:47AM (3 children)
You don't have to get a net energy gain, this is all about storage. All the examples in the article talk about extending time in the field and autonomous vehicles. You can spend all day with solar panels attached to electrodes, grab the resulting aluminum, toss it in your tank and then add water when needed. No explosive, compressed gasses -- just needs to provide more usable power than the same weight of battery.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Sunday August 13 2017, @10:30AM (1 child)
Yes, it's storage, so how does it compare to batteries?
The big advantage is energy density, probably ten times more than batteries.
The disadvantages are that it uses water, produces waste that has to be recycled, and needs a whole new infrastructure to be developed.
Using hydrogen is perhaps 60% efficient, and I'll hazard a guess that making aluminum is the same. That puts the round trip efficiency at 36%, and that's ignoring any inefficiency in producing the hydrogen. Round trip for a battery is around 80%.
In most cases I think batteries would win, but there are exceptions.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday August 13 2017, @07:07PM
It's very poorly written, mixing up energy and power, but they may mean that with three minutes warning they can generate 220 kW = about 300 horsepower.
Pretty high power level for something that small.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:28PM
That's interesting but kind of strange AC.
If you're bored google for "Development of the flameless ration heater" generations of soldiers since 1990 have thought that its aluminum powder and a solid base powder that activate with water to generate heat which turns out to not even remotely be how they work although thats interesting. How they actually work is what if you made a magnesium iron battery with no electrolyte separator and a dry powdered electrolyte and then add 2 oz of water (you'll need a hell of a lot more than 2 oz to wash down a MRE anyway) The byproducts are flammable H2 and semi-corrosive sem-dangerous slop. If you add too much water the reaction can't kick off correctly and the amount of time it takes to kick off depends on outside temps. You can get an interesting burn from them so all the theory about "heat a ration in your pants pocket" is physically possible at least in winter but probably not advisable. There were other problems like some early generation heaters used cardboard that would mush up if left too long and some trash bags could be melted thru. Obviously once started they can't stop. Presumably some magic heat powder would be sprinkled on and when you don't want more heat you stop sprinkling.
I have a URL for the DoD report in question
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a265693.pdf [dtic.mil]
Anyway the short version is something less corrosive and more human compatible might be nice so this nanoparticle stuff which would probably be implemented as "MRE heater 2.0"
Its not a very large amount of energy but it is really nice to have hot spaghetti and meatballs for lunch when you're sitting out in the field in the cold rain all week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:06AM
Almost: the hydrogen produced by reaction of aluminum with water can be used in a fuel cell, or for other purposes. Putting the aluminum powder form [energy.gov] had already been done.
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Sunday August 13 2017, @10:53AM (3 children)
The first thing you learn in chemistry is that a molecule of water consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.
Please get the basics right if you want me to RTFA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:49AM (1 child)
But this is army chemistry!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @03:56PM
Army chemistry by army physicists. Maybe they should start their own journal, which everyone else can ignore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @01:54AM
Pure hydrogen and oxygen ordinarily (on Earth) exist as molecules, not as atoms. Two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen can react to form one molecule of water.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @07:10PM
um.. why is a government agency concerned about this?
or was it done by a contractor that sees $$$$$$
(Score: 1) by hotsushi on Monday August 14 2017, @03:59AM
Kurt would be rolling over in his grave laughing out loud.