The capstone on the Washington monument in the U.S. is topped with a pyramid-shaped, inscribed piece of aluminum. At the time it was chosen for use, the price of aluminum was greater than for platinum.
My grandfather worked on this type of system at Sandia National Labs 50+ years ago on a "Hydrogen On Demand" systems that ran an entire city (of Sandia employees) situated in a hidden location in New Mexico. He said everything, EVERYTHING there ran on either hydrogen or electricity produced from this same water/Aluminium reaction. Cars, busses, trains, etc,. He was moved to another location to work on a project involving radar and sonar. He told me that when he went back to New Mexico a year or two later to consult with other scientists, he went to where that small city had been and it was GONE! Completely removed as if it had never been there. Not even a single chunk of street left behind. He was told that the project was scraped because it would be too disruptive to the oil/gas based economies. He ran his antique 35 ford truck from this tech and NEVER bought gas for that truck. He was constantly burning out components, (fuel injectors), as he tried to perfect the conversion. He did not have access to the more robust composite materials we have now. He said he could never try to sell or patent the idea/system because the oil men would prevent it or make him disappear like the Sandia city disappeared.
@@UKdajenx My uncle has the truck stored in his garage. The truck is nothing, a more modern vehicle would be better suited for this type of use. I do have one of the hydrogen production devices, it is a 2 chamber system, one chamber for the chemical reaction and the other chamber to build up and hold the hydrogen that is created, It only goes to 40lbs of pressure and the reaction stops, until you use the hydrogen and the reaction automatically starts again, builds to 40lbs and halts reacting. The device also has a duel valve system for loading water/acid/aluminium so it can be ran continuously without loss of pressure. It is a true "Hydrogen On Demand" system.
@@jholland404wow! That jamaican guy Harlow Maine did this exact concept and he ran his car this way using sodium hydroxide. I must ask, what type of acid did your grandfather use/recommend for this. I experiment with hydrogen, too. I found out the ideal way to do this with gallium. There's a 3% ratio that forms aluminum nano-particles allowing for near 100% efficiency.
Absolutely true about patents! I got one and applied for another, both through the company I worked for. They paid me about $1000 award for each, which is far more than they made off of them! Much the best way of doing it from this inventor's point of view! The one that made it through lapsed, btw, and so I'm free to use it, if I wich, even though I no longer work for that company.
@@greatawakeningforall Oh, one was for controlling the modulation rate of a laser communications system through turbulence, and the other (in which the patent was granted) was a method for aiming a laser beam without reimaging. Not relevant here at all.
I had a friend back in high-school who was absolutely convinced that cars in the future would be powered by bauxite - it is nice to see that his ideas may have had merit. He was also adamant that cars could be powered using ammonia. He really was ahead of his time...
Interesting stuff (some of which I knew before). On the point of patents - you are right Rob and the percentage nay be even higher (in terms of unused patents). There are many reasons for that , both economical , political , or just plain bad luck , or poor timing. Some patents get stolen , or the inventors get defrauded (Tesla , Goodyear...). Some are bought by companies , or unknown entities , because , those can be disruptive to the existing production , or a system . It is not because better product wins the market , but because of ruthlessness of opposing interested party (Betamax vs VHS , for an example). For sure (by the law of probability , some got killed). However , try to avoid the term "conspiracy theory". Firstly , the term was invented by CIA regarding JFK assassination (official version was Lee Harvey Oswald , but they still don't release all the documents and materials) and , one of the latest , was the quality of needle application on humans , of which many were forced to do it. I get that YT have some strict rules and whose interests they are defending (not free speech for sure) . There ARE suppressed technologies and ideas , because it is in human nature (to not let of power and control) and there are well known historical examples . Humans still wage wars over control over resources and you think that they (who are in control) will be OK with some (cheap , accessible to anyone) disruptive , freeing technology ? I'm not talking about the examples from the video.
- in all these systems, the trick is to make the whole system energy positive or there is no point in using the electrical energy to liberate the hydrogen. Another presupposition is that the Aluminium can be made (the whole system and supply chain) more cheaply and with fewer environmental costs than oil and gas or other battery systems... - CO2 free hydrogen "can" already be made easily enough - from any source of hydrocarbon - the carbon in the hydrocarbon becomes solid carbon. - hydrogen is easy enough to make for experiments - making it isn't the problem.. - ie, is the hydrogen fuel cell at the other end of the process powerful enough, cheap enough and reliable enough (and efficient in terms of lifecycle costs)... Metal as a stable long term energy store is incredibly useful - Aluminim-Air batteries are another great innovation... Of course Elon Musk said using electricity to make hydrogen is all "incredibly stupid" - jk, have a laugh... (no one can be right all the time)
Hi Rob, I tried reaching out to you a couple of times before I suggest you tale a look at the 'Atomic Torch'. It produces enough heat to melt tungsten... and split water! I hope you read this. Thanks.
@@Biggles732 Essentially yes it is briefly monatomic. H+H recombining is what produces excess heat with O being the biproduct forming H2O again in a closed loop system.
Thanks for the video! My bench is still covered with aluminum oxide. Months ago I failed trying to make electricity from a gallium aluminum on a plate of glass. Personally I love hydrogen, h2o2 I think they have lots of potential
Look, brother. You dissolve only about 3% of aluminum into the galium then you can slowly add water. It produces near 100% efficiency of hydrogen from aluminum and water. The aluminum becomes nano particles in the very ĺow concentration, allowing for absolute efficiency. I'm still trying to learn how to best separate the 2 materials when done to purify the galium.
Robert you've got to do a mini version of this, perhaps with one of those little v12 chinese engines, with everything measured accurately. Brilliant video!
When I was about 10 years old, my weekly comic proposed a very simple way to make hydrogen. Boiling water in a jar, add washing soda, ad an aluminium milk bottle top, catch the resulting gas, Insert a lighted 'spill' and the characteristic ''squeaky pop'' confirmed the presence of hydrogen.😊 I can confirm the difficulty of the transition from Patent to production. In effect you have to set up a factory process to make the article. That first requires a suitable building. Then all the machines needed, followed by all the materials needed. Next you need customers to buy the product and for that you need a sales staff! Then you need all the cash for the above! .
Excellent. Lithium metal is about $20/lb... but that speaks to another problem- market volatility. Aluminum is everywhere, and stored in large amounts, and there is no way it will triple in price in a year...
@@simongross3122 Use a wire to collect the 55 kWh of electrical energy per Kg Al... I am guessing it will release 500kj of heat per Kg Al > Al2O3. Burn the released hydrogen for another 100 kj... I haven't checked my math, but... that is worth looking into.
@@JohnBoen I'm reminded of the scene in Back to the Future where they empty a can of coke into the engine. Probably also need to drop the can in :) But I like the picture you describe. You could feed aluminium waste into your little engine/furnace thing to heat up your hot water system while simultaneously feeding electricity into your home battery. Your released hydrogen could be used either to burn for more heat, or in a fuel cell to generate more electricity. Then you can sell the leftover alumium oxide to an aluminium smelter.
Robert my mate put me on to your content late last year. I think your awesome and the scope of content your covering I honestly can't keep up with! However it is prompting me to go down these "rabbit holes" and being continually amazed, enlightened and motivated to discover more! I'm 50 this month and to be honest mate you've shown me more/ contributed to my understanding of science and hopefully more efficient efficient ways for us humans to live and make this planet a hopefully better place for all so much so than my science teachers in the 80s in secondary school. No disrespect meant to them by the way, that was I guess where I was educated at least the standard delivery model at the time! I am subscribing to your paid content as soon as I sort the post xmas bills out! Thanks Robert great job much appreciated Kind regards Dave
About 35 years ago a clever german inventor modified a bmw car replacing fuel tank with a mechanism that produced hydrogen on demand. For this purpose he used an aluminum wire roll used for welding. It was continually unfolded into an acid water bath, reacting with water to produce hydrogen which used as fuel into a normal petroleum engine.The car worked just fine and the inventor used the modified car to tour Europe on a test trip. I remember it very well because in my country a car magazine had interviewed the man and published an article about the car and the patent. I still recall that modified bmw car had already made some 2000 miles without any problem. The inventor departed my country (Greece) having the intention to continue testing his invention by tripping to America.
Stanely Meyer and Dennis Klien working separately supposedly converted water into a combustible gas. From what I understand about the process, exciting water with the proper resonate frequencies breaks the bonds in the water molecule thus converting it into a gas with separate oxygen and hydrogen molecules, very explosive. The resulting gas was then used to power a vehicle.
One of the rules for receiving a patent is that the device must be PROVEN to work - in some cases the inventor has resorted to performing a personal demonstration right in the patent office. I would be far more interested to see what kinds of inventions an AI would extrapolate if given access to the entire patent archive.
@@walterbaltzley4546That is not the case anymore, or for a long time now. You don't have to prove anything works anymore, they just take your money now and do not care. Patents are about giving just enough information to protect your idea, without giving enough info for someone to run off and make improvements and make a new patent. Not always the case, but is most of the time when it comes to important things.
Awesome video ! Going forward in Time, perhaps future beings will call this the "Aluminferous Period". Vast Aluminium deposits, same as we find Vast Coal deposits, or Oil. Odd to imagine our entire millennia-long existence reduced to "material concentrators".
I'm not convinced about this. The electrolysis refinement of aluminium emits a ton of CO2 as the graphite electrodes corrode into solution. So even if the electricity required was somehow all carbon neutral, the process fundamentally has CO2 as a biproduct. One could argue that it could be captured, but when talking about considering this strategy as a fuel source, the amount of aluminium required to suit the global needs is enormous, which comes with an equally enormous carbon footprint. At that point, it's probably easier to just use methane/ethanol/syngas/biodiesel because at least they act more effectively as a capturing method I think
@@uninteressant2196 To be fair I'm sure Robert is aware because of his background, I think it's a detail he either overlooked or thought wasn't as important as a point. Obviously if we were to discover a new way to make Aluminium or somehow decompose the CO2 back to graphite in processes that run off renewable energy and are profitable, they would solve almost all the issues with this concept
@@atrumluminarium Yes, still worth a mention- theres also the problem of weight, you have to carry the water as well as the Al, which is probably higher than a high pressure tank, but if we compare it with batteries its lightweight.
This is a brilliant breakdown of the Aluminium/Water hydrogen production. Right at the end we see the core process of using the Aluminium and water to release the energy from reacting them together. I would love to see the energy balance of using electric arc to remove the Oxygen from the Aluminium Oxide through to energy released when the naked Aluminium is returned to Aluminium Oxide in water. Then we have to factor in transportation of the raw materials and any loss of efficiency during the process. I know you don't get something for nothing energy wise. So, I hope there is some advantages that outweigh any losses.
@@TariqKhan-77 No I did not record build. At the time of the designing of this simple machine,I had to look at exactly what he wanted it to do on his boat. It had to be simple and easily maintained. The design eliminated gas and or diesel. The design encompasses two parts. One part uses Aluminum Ingots as a starter gas. The other part uses water splitting through Electrical splitting of water at the source so no Hydrogen Storage was required. In the design as the Engine was being started the Aluminum Ingot was flooded with Salt water. Many types of Salts can be used. Anyway this would start the process of producing Hydrogen Gas. Gas then run through a dryer medium then into a Flash back Arrester then into Motor. When Motor or Engine starts this is discontinued. Then it switches over to the simple Electronics to split water at the source. Remember there is no storage. Gas production is figured to run Engine at top speed or full power so there is no over production of Gas. Can you now get an idea of what I’ve designed? I hope this has helped you. Thank for the question. Have a wonderful day. PS this also works the same way for your Cars or Trucks and yes Lawnmowers or any Engine that runs Gasoline.
Aluminum is one of the worst things to use as fuel because its insanely energy intensive to make it in the first place. Most hydrogen production comes from natural gas because of economics.
Ha Ok smart guy Let's see you reduce alumina to metal and see how easy it is for you He's actually right Aluminum is insanely energy intensive to make.. using a significant fraction of the entire electric energy consumption of producing nations, look it up for yourself. In fact since you aced chemistry class I bet you'll be able to name tons of metals that are harder to reduce than aluminum The fact it's imo such a great thing to use for your own energy needs is that many places like Virginia where I live have no real recycling program for aluminum so cans just sit around for free waiting for someone to turn into a battery or in this case hydrogen gas
Great also for plug-in hybrid hydrogen-electric drive systems (just to keep the size of the fuel cell down somewhat) and long term off-grid power supplies. Would be interesting to see this integrated into the same size-category gen-sets that already exist, and maybe even swapped into electric semis ala Edison Motors. The fuel savings from hybrid alone are enormous, so going the standard IC hydrogen-engine route is still very useful in those cases.
oh that's interesting Francois Cornish the aluminum hydrogen patent guy who lives in Steynsrust Road here in Somerset West, is on the edge of town adjacent to some vinyeards at the lower slopes of Helderberg mountain. I would always drive there with my scooter to get drunk as I had no friends. hahaha! Little did I know! Fun fact! It's really beautiful because if you take the road down from Helena heights at sunset you can see the tip of Africa and table mountain over the ghettoed plain in the distance, while staying in this good neighbourhood, and it was always lovely to see the lights being on during twilight. But in late afternoon the light there is beautiful in the vineyards. I so regret I sold my scooters, damn! if I hadn't searched his address I would not have remembered this, as I had done this for years. Also it's a backroad and there is not a lot of traffic on it as it links up fro two other streets that only local residents would normaly think of using, even if it is a very large and affluent neighbourhood with some of the best views in Southern Africa with the bay and the tip of Africa being overlooked during sunset as too the large strip of land connecting the peninsulate to the continent. There had once been hippos and lions here, but they were all killed for the sake of civility thank God! I know some foreigners also stay there so no doubt Francois' patent was bought from him possibly, or something. I could find out for you if you like what happened to it?
Steyntsrust i see now is the street that goes down the very steep incline in the suburb down onto te Cape Flats that lead to the mountainous peninsula at the tip of Africa, where the sun sets over Lion's Head Peak next to table mountain. You can see the sky and all the clouds from there. It is I think about 5-9 km from our house. The back road were I would crack my drinks open on the scooter when I stopped is Bredell, which turns off from Steynsrust. It's really a must see view if you ever visit South Africa. One thing Tolkien did love about this place were the mountains. He otherwise termed South Africa a satan-licked land, a sentimen I totally share.
It's often fruitful to investigate the patent wrappers which show the journey from the original application to what was allowed to be patented. The USPTO will pull these up for free for you, however there is a charge if you want to get a copy. Patents often also obfuscate the working principle, whilst including enough to protect the idea. Example was Spiteri-Sergeant patent. It's a heat engine but that's never outright stated - this is the reason large pools of water are pictured, because they form the heat reservoirs.
It's aluminium-based energy. Water is just another energy conversion agent, and having people talk about "you can run a car just using water" is giving everyone entirely the wrong idea about water, energy, and cars.
This method was the way I fillled my first lighter then air balloon. A big wine bottle, alfoil, caustic soda and water, with the balloon neck stretched over the bottle neck. It was filling nicely until the bottle cracked from the heat! Panic stations for some seconds. :D
This happened back in the early sixties, thanks to out great science teacher ( who literally burnt out our science lab when he spilt some phosphorus on the desk and his raised platform 🤣🤣🤣) I'm still alive and uninjured and still inquisitive. 😁
6:13 I was surprised to learn only a few years ago that in a strict technical sense hydrogen is not explosive it is implosive. To the same approximate degree that dry steam is expansive. Not sure off the top of my head but I think it's about 1600 to 1 in volume.
back in 2003 ( when I was in college ) I had tried a stupid experiment of using aluminum blocks immersed in a small tank of sodium hydroxide to generate hydrogen and then used that to run a car over a short distance. It was a stupid idea but was fun. I had seen this patent ( the last one you mentioned ) back then also as a conspiracy theory but never found any more information on what voltage was used to achieve it. One problem that i see in that system is that the drum will also wear out eventually and would be a problem to replace.
I have seen an experiment where you take a small peice of aluminum and soak it in a tub of mercury. When you remove the aluminum from the mercury and place it in water, hydrogen will be produced off the surface of the treated aluminum. Supposedly someone was filling their gas tank with water, tossing in some treated aluminum, and driving around powered like that!
I have an old book " The boy mechanic" book one, 700 things for boys to do. On page 70, there is a constant pressure hydrogen generator. It uses zinc nodules and hydrochloric acid to generate hydrogen.
I tried to patent the remote control light bulb and remote control plug about 26 years ago it was accepted as there were only remote control ceiling fans at the time however they kept asking for more and more money and I had to leave it, a year later they were on the shelves in b&q exactly as I designed them
I wouldn`t patent any ideas I had, I would do my best to share them on big platforms if I could not get to use them commercially I believe that the patent system is wide open to corruption, slows down development and costs a small fortune. I am not money driven , would just love to be able to create something to enable people to escape the very well tied up energy market.
I use the Hindenburg to show how safe hydrogen is. Many of the passengers and crew survived. If you look at the footage you'll notice most of the flames are up high. One challenge with hydrogen is how it can seep into many materials causing issues such as hydrogen embrittlement .
Regarding patents: I've been told that they are primarily used by large companies/corporations to keep other companies from infringement. It seems the best option for an individual that owns a patent that doesn't have the capital is to sell the rights to a company that does.
Isn't that (supposedly) what the guy that designed the workmate did - sold his patent to Black and Decker for a penny per sale...making himself a ton of casn but making B&D many, many tons of cash?
@@thebrowns5337 I should also mention that the company would have an incentive to buy the rights(if they like it) as opposed to waiting for the patent to be abandoned. If they wait too long the owner may go to a competitor. I guess companies can have FOMO (Fear of missing out)
A couple of ideas I found floating around the internet that worked: 1) If using normal electrolysis - the addition of iron oxide (rust) into the solute (water) enhances the reaction. 2) Gently shaking the electrode allows the bubbles sticking to it to release which in turn allows for more H2 production as it frees up surface area. Considerably more. This could also be achieved by underwater sonic waves, but any action that gently shakes the electrode will work. 3) Referring to the AL + NaOH (or similar) reaction in water steam is produced - which could be used to power a small turbine on it's way up - then allowed to condense (say, in a coil) to be re-used later. The H2 is what is left after the steam condenses. So in addition to using AL as an electrode to capture the electricity, there's the steam power plus the leftover H2. It seems like the energy conversion could be considerable if every faucet of the process was used.
Very interesting. I think it should be also explored as a way of hydrogen boosting existing gasoline and diesel fueled ICE vehicles, enabling a lean burn and higher thermal efficiency.
Running the H through a fuel cell would recoup some of your consumed water back into it's tank extending the interval between water fillups. This would be nice because I suspect the water would idealy be several purification stemps beyond tap water (if not distilled) as not to gunk anything up with scale and non Aluminum Oxide sediment.
That was fascinating, with obvious practical applications. There is so much investment in IC power that if a viable clean way of using existing hardware can be found, the game is on!
Interesting idea. Remote municipal landfills sometimes have excess sorted aluminium, too expensive to ship anywhere for recycling. Maybe it should become local electrical power instead via this reaction. Hydrogen ICE still presents a NOx emission issue, and with new "embrittlement" longevity hurdles, from what I gather. But a 40foot containerised portable milling machine with small Al reactor generating meaningful output, might be a patent that gets an order book...
Hi, please respond. 2 Points: 1) In the past i calculated the amount of Aluminium and Water (!) that you would need to carry with you, if you wanted to take with you the same amount of hydrogen as some hydrogen suv from BMW. I can not remember the numbers exactly but i remembered that the 700bar H2 tank thats in the BMW had to be much lighter, while being a simpler system. I didnt know that you also get some Voltage out of that reaction, that could shove the equation in the right direction. 2) The creation of CO2 free aluminium is a much bigger problem. I have not found a solution that seems feasible. It currently works via Carbon Anodes that are dipped into the Al2O3+Kryolith Mixture to reduce the Aluminium while the CO2 conveniently leaves the Melted mass. A different Method to reduce the Aluminium Oxide is needed to make this a true alternative.
Nahhh. Last year lithium was shown to be a fairly simple catalyst for producing Ammonia at half the cost --not in a factory, but in an inexpensive benchtop unit. If you want extreme energy-density hydrogen supply, use NH4 and UV LEDs to blow up the N-H bond at the exact point of use. Can't get a more efficient, cheap, and safe hydrogen energy system!
This reminds me of getting the hydrogen out by Nilered. He has done a really in depth video on purple gold which he leaned about aluminium defects. As well, this reminded me of ruby makeing attempts by Nighthawkinlight.
Know what sucks about patents, there are some written so broad around a specific product that it covers novel versions of the product, and the patented product isnt being produced. This blocks alot of concepts from being produced. This happened at my company, a few engineers and myself (also an engineer) came up with a novel iteration of a product, but there was a patent written in such broad terms that it prevented us from producing the product with out making alterations which reduced the performance of the product. The patented product diagrams and descriptions were no where near our product, but the wording of the patent was written very well as to block out almost all potential iterations of the product. It took working with our patent team for a few months to come up with a design we could produce.
There is a conspiracy theory here in that if this was implemented, assuming it is possible to be mass produced, this would break the oil stranglehold, and therefore impact the value of the US $ globally. The cycle itself would also need to be considered from an overall efficiency point of view. Conversion of aluminium oxide to aluminium and then the reverse conversion back to aluminium oxide. Heat is produced in the conversion back to aluminium oxide, and hence is a loss, the the conversion efficiencies also reflect a loss. Hence, the discussion would be around the overall process efficiency and its contribution to CO2 production, which would only impact on the type of electricity used in that process and the transportation of the recovered aluminium oxide. Robert, you are absolutely correct about the safety aspect of its use in vehicles when compared to raw hydrogen. Aluminium producers tend to utilise cheap hydro-power and hence this process could result in a very low overall emissions impact.
It's worth a shot. Reality should hopefully illustrate some aspects of this process that theory hasn't fully covered, and it might just be a really valuable method. My biggest concern is that the degree of absolute precision might not be reflective of an engine where tiny adjustments are essential. The quality of the aluminum and general chemical variability could confound predicted vs actual performance.
I like the idea. I went right to it making sense, to build a hybrid using the electricity and hydrogen to power that hybrid power train. That seems like a good way to go.
Now that is a blast from the past. I remember looking at this patent and those pictures about 20 years ago. One problem I had was finding a source of cheap aluminium welding wire. It's still a considerable price compared to a rough ingot. The cylinder is easy to make. Take a large dog food can, fill it with chunks of aluminium and heat in a furnace, or as I did, in our fireplace. once cooled, peel the old can off and now you have a massive chunk of aluminium. I never did see if running a wire along it underwater and powered by a car ignition coil did what it was claimed to do. Now if we had an easy way to refine that aluminium oxide back into metal again that didn't require a molten salt solution...
Would it be viable to heat a space with potassium hydroxide + aluminium + water, using both the electricity & heat created by the reaction plus burning the hydrogen?
Ok hear me out... Aluminum cans already look like batteries and are nicely stackable. What if they are filled with water and when inserted into a container, a needle pierces the can to insert a corrosive agent that can dissolve the plastic liner. If that liner was applied to unoxidized aluminum to begin with, the production of hydrogen can begin from the inside out.
Just as MeOH may be considered (and is called thus by some) "liquid hydrogen", Al may analogously be referred to as "solid hydrogen". An in-depth head-to-head comparison between these two energy storage systems, taking all aspects into consideration, would be very interesting (hint - a future video perhaps?!). If I had to bet right from the top of my head, I'd say MeOH comes out as the winner, not least due to the unavoidable "solid exhausts" of Al (compare the corresponding gaseous exhausts of MeOH), but I'm all ears and open to change my bet...
Great video, very interesting. I was just wondering what happened to the hydrogen powerpaste invention, looked quite promising, have you tried experimenting with it or know what happened?
Catalytic carbon HOD uses scrap aluminum. Improves fuel efficiency of overseas transport by enough to save $7MM per container ship. Howard Phillips discovered this.
Hello Robert thankyou for such a great video as always. I am very intrigue by this insight amongst others. We would be at your beckoning call to make that machine as designed in Africa to put use as a engine. My thoughts wind/solar power as 14v with step up booster and the machine running to provide a drive to run an engine for other purposes. Just a thought but would love your genius ingenuity to formulate a simple design for some of us novice engineers.
Nice. I never put much stock in hydrogen for light transportation due to infrastructure rollout & after home 'refuelling', why would anyone go to a 'gas' station? But aluminium could be swapped at home/picked-up/dropped-off to the recycling centre and seems more viable as a fuel that petrol ever was. Could also generate for a fuel cell for EV range-anxious & a home back-up generator. Is there a domestic/portable Aluminium OxideAluminium roundtrip device? Prototype build?
Using the reaction of aluminium with water (catalysed by sodium hydroxide or other strong alkali) to generate electricity for an electric car is an interesting idea, because if you could fit an ordinary hydrogen fuel cell in addition to the aluminium/water cell, you would have two electricity sources. The voltage produced by these would not be identical, neither would the maximum possible rate of reaction - the latter is what defines the upper limit for the current the cell can deliver. So combining both to power a car would probably need some additional rechargeable batteries (a small bank of lithium-ion cells, for example) to act as a buffer - supercapacitors would be better for that, but they are still rather expensive. However, if you want to use aluminium metal as the fuel source for a car, there is already a much simpler way of doing that: Aluminium-air cells. This is the same sort of idea, but the weight is much lower and the energy density is consequently much higher - almost an order of magnitude better than lithium-ion batteries. The electrical energy output using the oxidation of aluminium with oxygen is higher than you get from the aluminium-water reaction (which is also oxidation of aluminium, just using water as the oxygen source), and probably still comes out on top even if you factor in the electrical energy output from using the hydrogen by-product (from the aluminium-water reaction) in a fuel cell. Another bonus of using aluminium-air cells is that you don't need to carry water around, since the oxygen can be taken from the air. This is significant because for the aluminium-water reaction to go to completion, each aluminium atom requires 3 water molecules. That's the molecular ratio, but since the atomic mass of aluminium is 27 and the molecular mass of water is 18, the overall mass ratio of aluminium to water comes out as exactly 1:2, so for any given mass of aluminium used, you need twice that mass of water. Another advantage is that metal-air cells are an existing and well understood technology, which can be scaled up or down fairly easily. Aluminium is not the only possible metal you can use in this way: Zinc-air cells have been a common button-cell type (for hearing aids and other small appliances) for almost 50 years, and large zinc-air cells with thousands of amp-hours capacity have been used industrially for almost a century. Several other metals have been made to work in the same way - magnesium, calcium, tin, even iron, but for energy density, aluminium is the best. One disadvantage is that all metal-air cells (aluminium or otherwise) are primary cells - they are not rechargeable, at least not in the usual way of passing electric current back through the cell to drive the reactions inside in reverse. However, the metal used as fuel does not have to be one solid lump - in fact it works better with powder or granules. So aluminium-air cells can be "physically recharged" by emptying the aluminium oxide out and adding more aluminium metal granules. Some industrial scale aluminium-air cells work in exactly this way. The other inherent disadvantage is that the aluminium oxide byproduct needs a lot of energy input to transform back into aluminium metal - typically by electrolysis at an aluminium refining factory. Also, the electrodes in these giant aluminium oxide electrolysis cells are typically made from carbon, often in the form of compressed coke or petcoke powder. The operating temperature of these cells is over 1000 degrees C, so the anodes literally burn away by reacting with the oxygen liberated from the aluminium oxide by electrolysis. So it actually works out such that for every ton of aluminium metal produced, almost 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are produced by the anode burning alone. Which is before you even consider the energy required to melt the aluminium oxide, which is typically done by burning natural gas. All of which means that using aluminium as a fuel is really not an environmentally sustainable process.
I was going to mention that Gallium works but you can also recapture the Gallium and create a cycle where you take the spent aluminium oxide and melt it down to repeat the process by adding more water Maybe this could be a energy dense battery
@@greatawakeningforall You filter the spent solution with excess water to remove as much of the reacted Aluminium oxide which will be like a grey wet sludge The Gallium will settle at the bottom of the water and can be extracted with a syringe and reused.
re aluminium strip in a steel pot containing hydroxide... Dipping the strip in the pot/stripping the oxide before it makes contact with the steel pot, will be necessary to allow it to make electrical contact with the pot. Aluminium oxide layers are very good insulators, Metal oxide layers also have excellent dialectic properties If the pure alu wasn't in contact with the metal pot would it work as a capacitor? it's not too different from an alu foil electrolytic capacitor. commercially produced ones use electrolytes that are caustic, that presumably strip the oxide layer.I know in about 2000 there was a lot a electrolytic capacitors going about that after a while they'd pop due to their producing hydrogren. (it seems to have been a case of industrial espionage resulting in the theft then use of a faulty electrolyte recipe) I've had extremely interesting results with anodised metal strip held inside(NB so it don't touch) copper tube, then partially filled with yorkshire tap water. Such tap water shouldn't strip the oxide layer, is ever so slightly conductive (very conductive compared to metal oxide layer). and appears to result in a higher capacitance value than using a standard type "caustic electrolyte". Capacitance value seems to be related to what voltage metal was anodised to, which is a proxy to how thick the highly dielectric anodising layer will be/follows that the thickness of the anodizing later is akin to plate separation variable of capacitor equation. and if left alone the capacitance value remains the same, suggesting the layer isn't being attacked nor changing thickness etc
I learned about this as a kid in school . Use the take a 32 ounce Coke glass bottle and do this to inflate balloons . Tried setting the gas on fire once. My God it stunk ! I think it burnt my lungs . Do not try this at home ........ Kids now days do this using plastic coke bottles . BOOM !
I, Chocolate Bon Bon X Falcon, live here in Somerset West in South Africa coincidentally where Francois lives I'll google streetview his house and see how far he stays from us.
Information I feel is critically missing is the amount of energy needed to refine the Aluminium or make the acid to begin with which should be considered.
Aluminium production may require around 13 kwhr/kg or 46.8 MJ and will 31 MJ/kg total energy on reactions for H2. Go and consider and other energy needed to understand haw beneficial these technology will be. With quick view looks that 31 MJ versus 46.8 MJ the efficiency on HFC car will be less than 66%.
Have you ever studied Stan Meyer work? He designed, patented and build a hydroxy gas generator. The way DC power works with electrolysis to generate Hydrogen, Stan's system could be compared to AC. Generated HHO gas, without all of the heat that conventional electrolysis generates. Look up video called "it runs on water"
My Father showed me that patent years back, its always stayed with me, there is no secret sauce here, the energy has to be applied back to convert the alumina back to aluminium. This and other hydrogen technology is the future, just fuel up with a new coil and exchange the sludge, this then gets reprocessed, magnesium would be another option
Great video, I saw a silver element table that seemed to say that silver 108 can become palladium 108 through some process, does that sound right to you or have I read it wrong?
please please please make an equivalent Robert .modular stackable cells .portable back pack option ...universal manifolds to join to standard carbs stoves etc . your channel is joy ... i wombled a strange engine together and it never worked ..... but what a thing that it works when made correct;y my bad ... i saw you run it ...loved it :) i want a 3d printer now though .... you got me hooked ..brilliant stuff sir
It is a function of the profit machine. There are many "free energy generators" invented and burried like the Rodin coil - a finicky device, the crystal generator and others. They are burried to keep the profit going!!
A combination hydrogen cell, thermal motor, the electrical redox output AND the mechanical pressure of producing hydrogen gas, ALL AT THE SAME TIME, would bring the potential efficiency very near to 95% But it would take a very organic approach, and very few people [other than myself] tend to think that way. Most people want to stratify and specialize, in direct opposition to creating an organic approach. And people GIVE me aluminum all the time. BUT... You CAN do the very same with sodium, too. And much more cheaply.
I'm looking forward to seeing you make one of these Robert. Pretty Please.....
The capstone on the Washington monument in the U.S. is topped with a pyramid-shaped, inscribed piece of aluminum. At the time it was chosen for use, the price of aluminum was greater than for platinum.
It's hilarious 😂
Doesnt that in itself tell you something?
My grandfather worked on this type of system at Sandia National Labs 50+ years ago on a "Hydrogen On Demand" systems that ran an entire city (of Sandia employees) situated in a hidden location in New Mexico. He said everything, EVERYTHING there ran on either hydrogen or electricity produced from this same water/Aluminium reaction. Cars, busses, trains, etc,. He was moved to another location to work on a project involving radar and sonar. He told me that when he went back to New Mexico a year or two later to consult with other scientists, he went to where that small city had been and it was GONE! Completely removed as if it had never been there. Not even a single chunk of street left behind. He was told that the project was scraped because it would be too disruptive to the oil/gas based economies.
He ran his antique 35 ford truck from this tech and NEVER bought gas for that truck. He was constantly burning out components, (fuel injectors), as he tried to perfect the conversion. He did not have access to the more robust composite materials we have now. He said he could never try to sell or patent the idea/system because the oil men would prevent it or make him disappear like the Sandia city disappeared.
Wauw! Thanks for sharing!
Do you have any evidence of this? Or do you have your grandfather's truck?
@@UKdajenx My uncle has the truck stored in his garage. The truck is nothing, a more modern vehicle would be better suited for this type of use. I do have one of the hydrogen production devices, it is a 2 chamber system, one chamber for the chemical reaction and the other chamber to build up and hold the hydrogen that is created, It only goes to 40lbs of pressure and the reaction stops, until you use the hydrogen and the reaction automatically starts again, builds to 40lbs and halts reacting. The device also has a duel valve system for loading water/acid/aluminium so it can be ran continuously without loss of pressure. It is a true "Hydrogen On Demand" system.
I know this is a real story. I've read about this all my life. I hope we can become free. Do not be affraid of evil--instead, turn towards the Light ❤
@@jholland404wow! That jamaican guy Harlow Maine did this exact concept and he ran his car this way using sodium hydroxide. I must ask, what type of acid did your grandfather use/recommend for this. I experiment with hydrogen, too. I found out the ideal way to do this with gallium. There's a 3% ratio that forms aluminum nano-particles allowing for near 100% efficiency.
Absolutely true about patents! I got one and applied for another, both through the company I worked for. They paid me about $1000 award for each, which is far more than they made off of them! Much the best way of doing it from this inventor's point of view! The one that made it through lapsed, btw, and so I'm free to use it, if I wich, even though I no longer work for that company.
What's it for?
@@greatawakeningforall Oh, one was for controlling the modulation rate of a laser communications system through turbulence, and the other (in which the patent was granted) was a method for aiming a laser beam without reimaging. Not relevant here at all.
I had a friend back in high-school who was absolutely convinced that cars in the future would be powered by bauxite - it is nice to see that his ideas may have had merit. He was also adamant that cars could be powered using ammonia. He really was ahead of his time...
sounds like a time traveler to me.
Interesting stuff (some of which I knew before). On the point of patents - you are right Rob and the percentage nay be even higher (in terms of unused patents). There are many reasons for that , both economical , political , or just plain bad luck , or poor timing. Some patents get stolen , or the inventors get defrauded (Tesla , Goodyear...). Some are bought by companies , or unknown entities , because , those can be disruptive to the existing production , or a system . It is not because better product wins the market , but because of ruthlessness of opposing interested party (Betamax vs VHS , for an example). For sure (by the law of probability , some got killed). However , try to avoid the term "conspiracy theory". Firstly , the term was invented by CIA regarding JFK assassination (official version was Lee Harvey Oswald , but they still don't release all the documents and materials) and , one of the latest , was the quality of needle application on humans , of which many were forced to do it. I get that YT have some strict rules and whose interests they are defending (not free speech for sure) . There ARE suppressed technologies and ideas , because it is in human nature (to not let of power and control) and there are well known historical examples . Humans still wage wars over control over resources and you think that they (who are in control) will be OK with some (cheap , accessible to anyone) disruptive , freeing technology ? I'm not talking about the examples from the video.
Perfect. I'll just pipe in with two examples of your explanation. Starlite and Gorilla glass.
It might be fun to see if this can be replicated by sticking a MIG torch in some water with aluminum wire.
I was thinkimg the same thing 😂
A car battery, a charger or com power supply, lots of ways work
- in all these systems, the trick is to make the whole system energy positive or there is no point in using the electrical energy to liberate the hydrogen. Another presupposition is that the Aluminium can be made (the whole system and supply chain) more cheaply and with fewer environmental costs than oil and gas or other battery systems...
- CO2 free hydrogen "can" already be made easily enough - from any source of hydrocarbon - the carbon in the hydrocarbon becomes solid carbon.
- hydrogen is easy enough to make for experiments - making it isn't the problem..
- ie, is the hydrogen fuel cell at the other end of the process powerful enough, cheap enough and reliable enough (and efficient in terms of lifecycle costs)...
Metal as a stable long term energy store is incredibly useful - Aluminim-Air batteries are another great innovation...
Of course Elon Musk said using electricity to make hydrogen is all "incredibly stupid" - jk, have a laugh... (no one can be right all the time)
If the solution and feed rate were appropriate, of course it would.
Hi Rob, I tried reaching out to you a couple of times before I suggest you tale a look at the 'Atomic Torch'. It produces enough heat to melt tungsten... and split water! I hope you read this. Thanks.
Got to wrestle it off Jamie first though
Would ,, atomic torch ,, be based on monatomic nascent hydrogen? .
Hho or browns gas passing thru an electric arc I think is how it worked. It's been 13 years since I was down that rabbit hole lol
@@Biggles732 Essentially yes it is briefly monatomic. H+H recombining is what produces excess heat with O being the biproduct forming H2O again in a closed loop system.
My guess is he is not "allowed" to respond or he will disappear like all the others...
Oh come on Robert, you know you want to build one for us. We’d love to see that. 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼
Thanks for the video! My bench is still covered with aluminum oxide. Months ago I failed trying to make electricity from a gallium aluminum on a plate of glass. Personally I love hydrogen, h2o2 I think they have lots of potential
Look, brother. You dissolve only about 3% of aluminum into the galium then you can slowly add water. It produces near 100% efficiency of hydrogen from aluminum and water. The aluminum becomes nano particles in the very ĺow concentration, allowing for absolute efficiency. I'm still trying to learn how to best separate the 2 materials when done to purify the galium.
@@greatawakeningforall you can use the heat from the reaction to liquefy and reclaim the gallium which will sink as it is twice as dense as aluminum.
Robert you've got to do a mini version of this, perhaps with one of those little v12 chinese engines, with everything measured accurately. Brilliant video!
I'd like to see that too...just don't Rob to mysteriously disappear shortly afterward.
When I was about 10 years old, my weekly comic proposed a very simple way to make hydrogen.
Boiling water in a jar, add washing soda, ad an aluminium milk bottle top, catch the resulting gas, Insert a lighted 'spill' and the characteristic ''squeaky pop'' confirmed the presence of hydrogen.😊
I can confirm the difficulty of the transition from Patent to production.
In effect you have to set up a factory process to make the article.
That first requires a suitable building.
Then all the machines needed, followed by all the materials needed.
Next you need customers to buy the product and for that you need a sales staff!
Then you need all the cash for the above!
.
A car that eats it's own aluminum engine! Brilliant!
Only if you pour the gallium into the crankcase instead of the fuel tank.
We will call it the oroboro engine.
@@timothygorman2846 when it won't start you have to pour it in the intake. Same with gas
Exactly ...!
We have to go down this road!!
Excellent.
Lithium metal is about $20/lb... but that speaks to another problem- market volatility. Aluminum is everywhere, and stored in large amounts, and there is no way it will triple in price in a year...
Not while there are vast amounts of aluminium just sitting around as waste.
@@simongross3122
Use a wire to collect the 55 kWh of electrical energy per Kg Al...
I am guessing it will release 500kj of heat per Kg Al > Al2O3.
Burn the released hydrogen for another 100 kj...
I haven't checked my math, but... that is worth looking into.
@@JohnBoen I'm reminded of the scene in Back to the Future where they empty a can of coke into the engine. Probably also need to drop the can in :)
But I like the picture you describe. You could feed aluminium waste into your little engine/furnace thing to heat up your hot water system while simultaneously feeding electricity into your home battery. Your released hydrogen could be used either to burn for more heat, or in a fuel cell to generate more electricity. Then you can sell the leftover alumium oxide to an aluminium smelter.
The prices he gave might be correct if we say pounds instead of dollars.
@@simongross3122 I thought fuel cells for hydrogen were say 90% efficient.
Robert my mate put me on to your content late last year. I think your awesome and the scope of content your covering I honestly can't keep up with! However it is prompting me to go down these "rabbit holes" and being continually amazed, enlightened and motivated to discover more! I'm 50 this month and to be honest mate you've shown me more/ contributed to my understanding of science and hopefully more efficient efficient ways for us humans to live and make this planet a hopefully better place for all so much so than my science teachers in the 80s in secondary school. No disrespect meant to them by the way, that was I guess where I was educated at least the standard delivery model at the time!
I am subscribing to your paid content as soon as I sort the post xmas bills out! Thanks Robert great job much appreciated
Kind regards
Dave
About 35 years ago a clever german inventor modified a bmw car replacing fuel tank with a mechanism that produced hydrogen on demand. For this purpose he used an aluminum wire roll used for welding. It was continually unfolded into an acid water bath, reacting with water to produce hydrogen which used as fuel into a normal petroleum engine.The car worked just fine and the inventor used the modified car to tour Europe on a test trip. I remember it very well because in my country a car magazine had interviewed the man and published an article about the car and the patent. I still recall that modified bmw car had already made some 2000 miles without any problem. The inventor departed my country (Greece) having the intention to continue testing his invention by tripping to America.
Stanely Meyer and Dennis Klien working separately supposedly converted water into a combustible gas. From what I understand about the process, exciting water with the proper resonate frequencies breaks the bonds in the water molecule thus converting it into a gas with separate oxygen and hydrogen
molecules, very explosive. The resulting gas was then used to power a vehicle.
water electrolysis plus the right frequency Stan Myer had a car that ran on water...
Might be fun to collect as many lapsed patents as possible and put them through a self learning AI application to see how far they were off the mark.
Coool
One of the rules for receiving a patent is that the device must be PROVEN to work - in some cases the inventor has resorted to performing a personal demonstration right in the patent office. I would be far more interested to see what kinds of inventions an AI would extrapolate if given access to the entire patent archive.
Check out the Francisco Pacheco generators the use magnesium, aluminum stainless steel and salt water
@@walterbaltzley4546That is not the case anymore, or for a long time now. You don't have to prove anything works anymore, they just take your money now and do not care. Patents are about giving just enough information to protect your idea, without giving enough info for someone to run off and make improvements and make a new patent. Not always the case, but is most of the time when it comes to important things.
i like the way you think !
That second one seems like it might be a good off grid solution emergency generator.
Awesome video !
Going forward in Time, perhaps future beings will call this the "Aluminferous Period".
Vast Aluminium deposits, same as we find Vast Coal deposits, or Oil.
Odd to imagine our entire millennia-long existence reduced to "material concentrators".
I'm not convinced about this. The electrolysis refinement of aluminium emits a ton of CO2 as the graphite electrodes corrode into solution. So even if the electricity required was somehow all carbon neutral, the process fundamentally has CO2 as a biproduct.
One could argue that it could be captured, but when talking about considering this strategy as a fuel source, the amount of aluminium required to suit the global needs is enormous, which comes with an equally enormous carbon footprint.
At that point, it's probably easier to just use methane/ethanol/syngas/biodiesel because at least they act more effectively as a capturing method I think
Thank you, at least one that has looked into how its basically impossible to create Al CO2 free.
@@uninteressant2196 To be fair I'm sure Robert is aware because of his background, I think it's a detail he either overlooked or thought wasn't as important as a point. Obviously if we were to discover a new way to make Aluminium or somehow decompose the CO2 back to graphite in processes that run off renewable energy and are profitable, they would solve almost all the issues with this concept
@@atrumluminarium Yes, still worth a mention- theres also the problem of weight, you have to carry the water as well as the Al, which is probably higher than a high pressure tank, but if we compare it with batteries its lightweight.
This is a brilliant breakdown of the Aluminium/Water hydrogen production. Right at the end we see the core process of using the Aluminium and water to release the energy from reacting them together. I would love to see the energy balance of using electric arc to remove the Oxygen from the Aluminium Oxide through to energy released when the naked Aluminium is returned to Aluminium Oxide in water. Then we have to factor in transportation of the raw materials and any loss of efficiency during the process. I know you don't get something for nothing energy wise. So, I hope there is some advantages that outweigh any losses.
Very good video Robert. This is very similar to a design I crated for my brothers sail boat so he could travel the ocean blue using ocean water.😊
Please post more details, did you record the build?
@@TariqKhan-77 No I did not record build. At the time of the designing of this simple machine,I had to look at exactly what he wanted it to do on his boat. It had to be simple and easily maintained. The design eliminated gas and or diesel. The design encompasses two parts. One part uses Aluminum Ingots as a starter gas. The other part uses water splitting through Electrical splitting of water at the source so no Hydrogen Storage was required. In the design as the Engine was being started the Aluminum Ingot was flooded with Salt water. Many types of Salts can be used. Anyway this would start the process of producing Hydrogen Gas. Gas then run through a dryer medium then into a Flash back Arrester then into Motor. When Motor or Engine starts this is discontinued. Then it switches over to the simple Electronics to split water at the source. Remember there is no storage. Gas production is figured to run Engine at top speed or full power so there is no over production of Gas. Can you now get an idea of what I’ve designed? I hope this has helped you. Thank for the question. Have a wonderful day. PS this also works the same way for your Cars or Trucks and yes Lawnmowers or any Engine that runs Gasoline.
Aluminum is one of the worst things to use as fuel because its insanely energy intensive to make it in the first place. Most hydrogen production comes from natural gas because of economics.
Said someone who skipped chemistry.
Do you have any sources or data for the background on your statement?
Ha
Ok smart guy
Let's see you reduce alumina to metal and see how easy it is for you
He's actually right
Aluminum is insanely energy intensive to make.. using a significant fraction of the entire electric energy consumption of producing nations, look it up for yourself.
In fact since you aced chemistry class I bet you'll be able to name tons of metals that are harder to reduce than aluminum
The fact it's imo such a great thing to use for your own energy needs is that many places like Virginia where I live have no real recycling program for aluminum so cans just sit around for free waiting for someone to turn into a battery or in this case hydrogen gas
@dirtdiggity1714 ^
I think the idea would be to utilize existing aluminum waste that has yet to be recycled, not fresh metal from the foundry.
Great also for plug-in hybrid hydrogen-electric drive systems (just to keep the size of the fuel cell down somewhat) and long term off-grid power supplies.
Would be interesting to see this integrated into the same size-category gen-sets that already exist, and maybe even swapped into electric semis ala Edison Motors. The fuel savings from hybrid alone are enormous, so going the standard IC hydrogen-engine route is still very useful in those cases.
oh that's interesting Francois Cornish the aluminum hydrogen patent guy who lives in Steynsrust Road here in Somerset West, is on the edge of town adjacent to some vinyeards at the lower slopes of Helderberg mountain. I would always drive there with my scooter to get drunk as I had no friends. hahaha! Little did I know! Fun fact! It's really beautiful because if you take the road down from Helena heights at sunset you can see the tip of Africa and table mountain over the ghettoed plain in the distance, while staying in this good neighbourhood, and it was always lovely to see the lights being on during twilight. But in late afternoon the light there is beautiful in the vineyards. I so regret I sold my scooters, damn! if I hadn't searched his address I would not have remembered this, as I had done this for years. Also it's a backroad and there is not a lot of traffic on it as it links up fro two other streets that only local residents would normaly think of using, even if it is a very large and affluent neighbourhood with some of the best views in Southern Africa with the bay and the tip of Africa being overlooked during sunset as too the large strip of land connecting the peninsulate to the continent. There had once been hippos and lions here, but they were all killed for the sake of civility thank God! I know some foreigners also stay there so no doubt Francois' patent was bought from him possibly, or something. I could find out for you if you like what happened to it?
Steyntsrust i see now is the street that goes down the very steep incline in the suburb down onto te Cape Flats that lead to the mountainous peninsula at the tip of Africa, where the sun sets over Lion's Head Peak next to table mountain. You can see the sky and all the clouds from there. It is I think about 5-9 km from our house. The back road were I would crack my drinks open on the scooter when I stopped is Bredell, which turns off from Steynsrust. It's really a must see view if you ever visit South Africa. One thing Tolkien did love about this place were the mountains. He otherwise termed South Africa a satan-licked land, a sentimen I totally share.
You are right the Queen‘s English was before our present misspelling of color and honor, and we’re not spelling aluminum wrong to tell you that
It's often fruitful to investigate the patent wrappers which show the journey from the original application to what was allowed to be patented. The USPTO will pull these up for free for you, however there is a charge if you want to get a copy.
Patents often also obfuscate the working principle, whilst including enough to protect the idea. Example was Spiteri-Sergeant patent. It's a heat engine but that's never outright stated - this is the reason large pools of water are pictured, because they form the heat reservoirs.
It's aluminium-based energy. Water is just another energy conversion agent, and having people talk about "you can run a car just using water" is giving everyone entirely the wrong idea about water, energy, and cars.
This method was the way I fillled my first lighter then air balloon. A big wine bottle, alfoil, caustic soda and water, with the balloon neck stretched over the bottle neck. It was filling nicely until the bottle cracked from the heat! Panic stations for some seconds. :D
Awesome 👌 be careful
This happened back in the early sixties, thanks to out great science teacher ( who literally burnt out our science lab when he spilt some phosphorus on the desk and his raised platform 🤣🤣🤣) I'm still alive and uninjured and still inquisitive. 😁
Hydrogen Electric, no charging, electric on demand...the future
They discovered that the Statue of Eros in Oxford Circus in London was cast from Aluminium :-)
6:13 I was surprised to learn only a few years ago that in a strict technical sense hydrogen is not explosive it is implosive. To the same approximate degree that dry steam is expansive. Not sure off the top of my head but I think it's about 1600 to 1 in volume.
back in 2003 ( when I was in college ) I had tried a stupid experiment of using aluminum blocks immersed in a small tank of sodium hydroxide to generate hydrogen and then used that to run a car over a short distance. It was a stupid idea but was fun. I had seen this patent ( the last one you mentioned ) back then also as a conspiracy theory but never found any more information on what voltage was used to achieve it. One problem that i see in that system is that the drum will also wear out eventually and would be a problem to replace.
Very neat stuff Robert, as usual from you. Thanks.
Rob, you just keep on giving and keep on amazing me. Many thanks
I have seen an experiment where you take a small peice of aluminum and soak it in a tub of mercury. When you remove the aluminum from the mercury and place it in water, hydrogen will be produced off the surface of the treated aluminum. Supposedly someone was filling their gas tank with water, tossing in some treated aluminum, and driving around powered like that!
Absolutely fascinating!
I have an old book " The boy mechanic" book one, 700 things for boys to do. On page 70, there is a constant pressure hydrogen generator. It uses zinc nodules and hydrochloric acid to generate hydrogen.
Thank you for the chemistry lesson on aluminum. That was good.
Thanks for this really intresting video. You could break up water via resonance also right?
I tried to patent the remote control light bulb and remote control plug about 26 years ago it was accepted as there were only remote control ceiling fans at the time however they kept asking for more and more money and I had to leave it, a year later they were on the shelves in b&q exactly as I designed them
I wouldn`t patent any ideas I had, I would do my best to share them on big platforms if I could not get to use them commercially
I believe that the patent system is wide open to corruption, slows down development and costs a small fortune.
I am not money driven , would just love to be able to create something to enable people to escape the very well tied up energy market.
Yeah that's interesting. I'd be trying that last one with a roll of Aluminium foil. Thanks Rob! ❤
I use the Hindenburg to show how safe hydrogen is. Many of the passengers and crew survived. If you look at the footage you'll notice most of the flames are up high. One challenge with hydrogen is how it can seep into many materials causing issues such as hydrogen embrittlement .
Regarding patents: I've been told that they are primarily used by large companies/corporations to keep other companies from infringement. It seems the best option for an individual that owns a patent that doesn't have the capital is to sell the rights to a company that does.
Isn't that (supposedly) what the guy that designed the workmate did - sold his patent to Black and Decker for a penny per sale...making himself a ton of casn but making B&D many, many tons of cash?
@@thebrowns5337 I'm not familiar with the story but essentially yes
@@thebrowns5337 I should also mention that the company would have an incentive to buy the rights(if they like it) as opposed to waiting for the patent to be abandoned. If they wait too long the owner may go to a competitor. I guess companies can have FOMO (Fear of missing out)
A couple of ideas I found floating around the internet that worked: 1) If using normal electrolysis - the addition of iron oxide (rust) into the solute (water) enhances the reaction. 2) Gently shaking the electrode allows the bubbles sticking to it to release which in turn allows for more H2 production as it frees up surface area. Considerably more. This could also be achieved by underwater sonic waves, but any action that gently shakes the electrode will work. 3) Referring to the AL + NaOH (or similar) reaction in water steam is produced - which could be used to power a small turbine on it's way up - then allowed to condense (say, in a coil) to be re-used later. The H2 is what is left after the steam condenses. So in addition to using AL as an electrode to capture the electricity, there's the steam power plus the leftover H2. It seems like the energy conversion could be considerable if every faucet of the process was used.
Very interesting. I think it should be also explored as a way of hydrogen boosting existing gasoline and diesel fueled ICE vehicles, enabling a lean burn and higher thermal efficiency.
Very interesting, thank you Robert
South Africa 🇿🇦 again ❤️
Running the H through a fuel cell would recoup some of your consumed water back into it's tank extending the interval between water fillups. This would be nice because I suspect the water would idealy be several purification stemps beyond tap water (if not distilled) as not to gunk anything up with scale and non Aluminum Oxide sediment.
That was fascinating, with obvious practical applications. There is so much investment in IC power that if a viable clean way of using existing hardware can be found, the game is on!
Interesting idea. Remote municipal landfills sometimes have excess sorted aluminium, too expensive to ship anywhere for recycling. Maybe it should become local electrical power instead via this reaction. Hydrogen ICE still presents a NOx emission issue, and with new "embrittlement" longevity hurdles, from what I gather. But a 40foot containerised portable milling machine with small Al reactor generating meaningful output, might be a patent that gets an order book...
Hi, please respond.
2 Points:
1) In the past i calculated the amount of Aluminium and Water (!) that you would need to carry with you, if you wanted to take with you the same amount of hydrogen as some hydrogen suv from BMW. I can not remember the numbers exactly but i remembered that the 700bar H2 tank thats in the BMW had to be much lighter, while being a simpler system.
I didnt know that you also get some Voltage out of that reaction, that could shove the equation in the right direction.
2) The creation of CO2 free aluminium is a much bigger problem. I have not found a solution that seems feasible. It currently works via Carbon Anodes that are dipped into the Al2O3+Kryolith Mixture to reduce the Aluminium while the CO2 conveniently leaves the Melted mass.
A different Method to reduce the Aluminium Oxide is needed to make this a true alternative.
Nahhh. Last year lithium was shown to be a fairly simple catalyst for producing Ammonia at half the cost --not in a factory, but in an inexpensive benchtop unit. If you want extreme energy-density hydrogen supply, use NH4 and UV LEDs to blow up the N-H bond at the exact point of use. Can't get a more efficient, cheap, and safe hydrogen energy system!
An excellent and informative video Robert :)
Great video, Robert...👍
Great lesson of chemistry, engineering, and intelectual property protection law (re patents)...👍😁😎
Interesting stuff. I hope that you will try building the wire machine and maybe make some of those alloys in the future.
Companies House lists a correspondence address in South Africa, but LinkedIn mentions Angola.
This reminds me of getting the hydrogen out by Nilered. He has done a really in depth video on purple gold which he leaned about aluminium defects. As well, this reminded me of ruby makeing attempts by Nighthawkinlight.
Aluminum oxide used to make sand paper. It is very hard and course.
Know what sucks about patents, there are some written so broad around a specific product that it covers novel versions of the product, and the patented product isnt being produced. This blocks alot of concepts from being produced. This happened at my company, a few engineers and myself (also an engineer) came up with a novel iteration of a product, but there was a patent written in such broad terms that it prevented us from producing the product with out making alterations which reduced the performance of the product. The patented product diagrams and descriptions were no where near our product, but the wording of the patent was written very well as to block out almost all potential iterations of the product. It took working with our patent team for a few months to come up with a design we could produce.
There is a conspiracy theory here in that if this was implemented, assuming it is possible to be mass produced, this would break the oil stranglehold, and therefore impact the value of the US $ globally. The cycle itself would also need to be considered from an overall efficiency point of view. Conversion of aluminium oxide to aluminium and then the reverse conversion back to aluminium oxide. Heat is produced in the conversion back to aluminium oxide, and hence is a loss, the the conversion efficiencies also reflect a loss. Hence, the discussion would be around the overall process efficiency and its contribution to CO2 production, which would only impact on the type of electricity used in that process and the transportation of the recovered aluminium oxide.
Robert, you are absolutely correct about the safety aspect of its use in vehicles when compared to raw hydrogen. Aluminium producers tend to utilise cheap hydro-power and hence this process could result in a very low overall emissions impact.
It's worth a shot. Reality should hopefully illustrate some aspects of this process that theory hasn't fully covered, and it might just be a really valuable method. My biggest concern is that the degree of absolute precision might not be reflective of an engine where tiny adjustments are essential. The quality of the aluminum and general chemical variability could confound predicted vs actual performance.
I would be really interested to see an in-depth discussion of the economics of a system like this
I like the idea. I went right to it making sense, to build a hybrid using the electricity and hydrogen to power that hybrid power train. That seems like a good way to go.
Now that is a blast from the past. I remember looking at this patent and those pictures about 20 years ago. One problem I had was finding a source of cheap aluminium welding wire. It's still a considerable price compared to a rough ingot. The cylinder is easy to make. Take a large dog food can, fill it with chunks of aluminium and heat in a furnace, or as I did, in our fireplace. once cooled, peel the old can off and now you have a massive chunk of aluminium. I never did see if running a wire along it underwater and powered by a car ignition coil did what it was claimed to do. Now if we had an easy way to refine that aluminium oxide back into metal again that didn't require a molten salt solution...
Would it be viable to heat a space with potassium hydroxide + aluminium + water, using both the electricity & heat created by the reaction plus burning the hydrogen?
I've always thought about hydrogen energy
I think the system is recovering energy from the aluminium refinery
I am pretty sure that a VW beetle was modified to run off a reel of aluminium wire, back in the 1970s.
Ok hear me out... Aluminum cans already look like batteries and are nicely stackable. What if they are filled with water and when inserted into a container, a needle pierces the can to insert a corrosive agent that can dissolve the plastic liner. If that liner was applied to unoxidized aluminum to begin with, the production of hydrogen can begin from the inside out.
Just as MeOH may be considered (and is called thus by some) "liquid hydrogen", Al may analogously be referred to as "solid hydrogen". An in-depth head-to-head comparison between these two energy storage systems, taking all aspects into consideration, would be very interesting (hint - a future video perhaps?!). If I had to bet right from the top of my head, I'd say MeOH comes out as the winner, not least due to the unavoidable "solid exhausts" of Al (compare the corresponding gaseous exhausts of MeOH), but I'm all ears and open to change my bet...
you can make a nylon pistion and a lower rod of Al that dips in to too a solution in a cylinder for a simple engine.
Great video, very interesting. I was just wondering what happened to the hydrogen powerpaste invention, looked quite promising, have you tried experimenting with it or know what happened?
Catalytic carbon HOD uses scrap aluminum. Improves fuel efficiency of overseas transport by enough to save $7MM per container ship. Howard Phillips discovered this.
I love a good conspiracy. This seems like an awesome device.
Hello Robert thankyou for such a great video as always. I am very intrigue by this insight amongst others. We would be at your beckoning call to make that machine as designed in Africa to put use as a engine. My thoughts wind/solar power as 14v with step up booster and the machine running to provide a drive to run an engine for other purposes. Just a thought but would love your genius ingenuity to formulate a simple design for some of us novice engineers.
Nice. I never put much stock in hydrogen for light transportation due to infrastructure rollout & after home 'refuelling', why would anyone go to a 'gas' station? But aluminium could be swapped at home/picked-up/dropped-off to the recycling centre and seems more viable as a fuel that petrol ever was. Could also generate for a fuel cell for EV range-anxious & a home back-up generator. Is there a domestic/portable Aluminium OxideAluminium roundtrip device?
Prototype build?
Using the reaction of aluminium with water (catalysed by sodium hydroxide or other strong alkali) to generate electricity for an electric car is an interesting idea, because if you could fit an ordinary hydrogen fuel cell in addition to the aluminium/water cell, you would have two electricity sources. The voltage produced by these would not be identical, neither would the maximum possible rate of reaction - the latter is what defines the upper limit for the current the cell can deliver. So combining both to power a car would probably need some additional rechargeable batteries (a small bank of lithium-ion cells, for example) to act as a buffer - supercapacitors would be better for that, but they are still rather expensive.
However, if you want to use aluminium metal as the fuel source for a car, there is already a much simpler way of doing that: Aluminium-air cells. This is the same sort of idea, but the weight is much lower and the energy density is consequently much higher - almost an order of magnitude better than lithium-ion batteries. The electrical energy output using the oxidation of aluminium with oxygen is higher than you get from the aluminium-water reaction (which is also oxidation of aluminium, just using water as the oxygen source), and probably still comes out on top even if you factor in the electrical energy output from using the hydrogen by-product (from the aluminium-water reaction) in a fuel cell.
Another bonus of using aluminium-air cells is that you don't need to carry water around, since the oxygen can be taken from the air. This is significant because for the aluminium-water reaction to go to completion, each aluminium atom requires 3 water molecules. That's the molecular ratio, but since the atomic mass of aluminium is 27 and the molecular mass of water is 18, the overall mass ratio of aluminium to water comes out as exactly 1:2, so for any given mass of aluminium used, you need twice that mass of water.
Another advantage is that metal-air cells are an existing and well understood technology, which can be scaled up or down fairly easily. Aluminium is not the only possible metal you can use in this way: Zinc-air cells have been a common button-cell type (for hearing aids and other small appliances) for almost 50 years, and large zinc-air cells with thousands of amp-hours capacity have been used industrially for almost a century. Several other metals have been made to work in the same way - magnesium, calcium, tin, even iron, but for energy density, aluminium is the best.
One disadvantage is that all metal-air cells (aluminium or otherwise) are primary cells - they are not rechargeable, at least not in the usual way of passing electric current back through the cell to drive the reactions inside in reverse. However, the metal used as fuel does not have to be one solid lump - in fact it works better with powder or granules. So aluminium-air cells can be "physically recharged" by emptying the aluminium oxide out and adding more aluminium metal granules. Some industrial scale aluminium-air cells work in exactly this way.
The other inherent disadvantage is that the aluminium oxide byproduct needs a lot of energy input to transform back into aluminium metal - typically by electrolysis at an aluminium refining factory. Also, the electrodes in these giant aluminium oxide electrolysis cells are typically made from carbon, often in the form of compressed coke or petcoke powder. The operating temperature of these cells is over 1000 degrees C, so the anodes literally burn away by reacting with the oxygen liberated from the aluminium oxide by electrolysis. So it actually works out such that for every ton of aluminium metal produced, almost 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are produced by the anode burning alone. Which is before you even consider the energy required to melt the aluminium oxide, which is typically done by burning natural gas. All of which means that using aluminium as a fuel is really not an environmentally sustainable process.
So, it's a storage battery. The energy to create it is stored as a solid and converted back.
I was going to mention that Gallium works but you can also recapture the Gallium and create a cycle where you take the spent aluminium oxide and melt it down to repeat the process by adding more water
Maybe this could be a energy dense battery
When you do this process with galium, how do you purify the galium again? And is aluminum oxide really what's created?
@@greatawakeningforall
You filter the spent solution with excess water to remove as much of the reacted Aluminium oxide which will be like a grey wet sludge
The Gallium will settle at the bottom of the water and can be extracted with a syringe and reused.
re aluminium strip in a steel pot containing hydroxide...
Dipping the strip in the pot/stripping the oxide before it makes contact with the steel pot, will be necessary to allow it to make electrical contact with the pot. Aluminium oxide layers are very good insulators, Metal oxide layers also have excellent dialectic properties
If the pure alu wasn't in contact with the metal pot would it work as a capacitor? it's not too different from an alu foil electrolytic capacitor. commercially produced ones use electrolytes that are caustic, that presumably strip the oxide layer.I know in about 2000 there was a lot a electrolytic capacitors going about that after a while they'd pop due to their producing hydrogren. (it seems to have been a case of industrial espionage resulting in the theft then use of a faulty electrolyte recipe)
I've had extremely interesting results with anodised metal strip held inside(NB so it don't touch) copper tube, then partially filled with yorkshire tap water. Such tap water shouldn't strip the oxide layer, is ever so slightly conductive (very conductive compared to metal oxide layer). and appears to result in a higher capacitance value than using a standard type "caustic electrolyte". Capacitance value seems to be related to what voltage metal was anodised to, which is a proxy to how thick the highly dielectric anodising layer will be/follows that the thickness of the anodizing later is akin to plate separation variable of capacitor equation. and if left alone the capacitance value remains the same, suggesting the layer isn't being attacked nor changing thickness etc
I learned about this as a kid in school . Use the take a 32 ounce Coke glass bottle and do this to inflate balloons . Tried setting the gas on fire once. My God it stunk ! I think it burnt my lungs . Do not try this at home ........
Kids now days do this using plastic coke bottles . BOOM !
I, Chocolate Bon Bon X Falcon, live here in Somerset West in South Africa coincidentally where Francois lives I'll google streetview his house and see how far he stays from us.
Can you do a segment on the Laclanche cell? My dad has been raving about it for the past 40 years.
Information I feel is critically missing is the amount of energy needed to refine the Aluminium or make the acid to begin with which should be considered.
Ive thought this ever since a nuffield chemistry experiment at school in the 1970's. Blow steam over wire wool and light the hydrogen exhaust.
Aluminium production may require around 13 kwhr/kg or 46.8 MJ and will 31 MJ/kg total energy on reactions for H2. Go and consider and other energy needed to understand haw beneficial these technology will be. With quick view looks that 31 MJ versus 46.8 MJ the efficiency on HFC car will be less than 66%.
I think i understood, I'll have to watch it again 🤦🏻♂️🤣
Any idea how to store (or consume) the H2 gas from the reaction?
Have you ever studied Stan Meyer work? He designed, patented and build a hydroxy gas generator.
The way DC power works with electrolysis to generate Hydrogen, Stan's system could be compared to AC. Generated HHO gas, without all of the heat that conventional electrolysis generates. Look up video called "it runs on water"
My Father showed me that patent years back, its always stayed with me, there is no secret sauce here, the energy has to be applied back to convert the alumina back to aluminium. This and other hydrogen technology is the future, just fuel up with a new coil and exchange the sludge, this then gets reprocessed, magnesium would be another option
Great video, I saw a silver element table that seemed to say that silver 108 can become palladium 108 through some process, does that sound right to you or have I read it wrong?
please please please make an equivalent Robert .modular stackable cells .portable back pack option ...universal manifolds to join to standard carbs stoves etc . your channel is joy ... i wombled a strange engine together and it never worked ..... but what a thing that it works when made correct;y my bad ... i saw you run it ...loved it :) i want a 3d printer now though .... you got me hooked ..brilliant stuff sir
Someone needs to find a way of splitting air into its components. An air splitting hydrogen/oxygen generating engine
It is a function of the profit machine. There are many "free energy generators" invented and burried like the Rodin coil - a finicky device, the crystal generator and others. They are burried to keep the profit going!!
A combination hydrogen cell, thermal motor, the electrical redox output AND the mechanical pressure of producing hydrogen gas, ALL AT THE SAME TIME, would bring the potential efficiency very near to 95%
But it would take a very organic approach, and very few people [other than myself] tend to think that way.
Most people want to stratify and specialize, in direct opposition to creating an organic approach.
And people GIVE me aluminum all the time.
BUT...
You CAN do the very same with sodium, too.
And much more cheaply.