This Liquid Metal Turns Garbage Into Fuel
Vložit
- čas přidán 23. 08. 2022
- Checkout MEL science here: melscience.com/sBJk/
Shop the Action Lab Science Gear here: theactionlab.com/
In this video I show you how to make hydrogen from aluminum
Checkout my experiment book: amzn.to/2Wf07x1
Twitter: / theactionlabman
Facebook: / theactionlabofficial
Instagram: / therealactionlab
Snap: / 426771378288640
Tik Tok: / theactionlabshorts - Věda a technologie
I am a Ph.D. student working with aluminum-gallium alloys in energy production and I would like to clarify a couple things I see in the comments regarding the idea. A lot of people are suggesting that this is actually a poor idea to use in cars, airplanes, etc. and I believe they are right. But that doesn't mean it isn't going to be useful. The major interest in Al-Ga alloys is its use as an energy carrier. As good as batteries are for some applications, the energy density of batteries are actually quite horrible, which is an issue if you want to store energy rather than just have it be portable.
For example, wind, solar, and nuclear energy are difficult to throttle on demand. In other words, you only get energy from the wind when it is blowing and from solar when it is sunny. Conversely, you will be getting energy from wind and from solar whether you need it or not. To solve this problem, a lot of ideas are to use batteries to store unused energy from these "clean" energy sources so that it can be used at a later time. However, due to the really poor efficiency of batteries, a lot of energy is lost. This is where Al-Ga may come in handy. We can use excess solar, wind, and nuclear energy to produce aluminum from aluminum oxide. The aluminum now acts as a "battery" to store the energy. Then, when we want to release the energy again (e.g. in the middle of the night when the wind isn't blowing, etc.), the aluminum gallium can produce hydrogen which can then be burnt in a powerplant to create on-demand energy. This process of storing energy in aluminum is actually a lot more efficient than most batteries.
So while this may not be terribly useful in cars or vehicles themselves, it may be useful as an energy carrier for large-scale powerplants.
Thanks for sharing your explanation and sharing your insights on the topic. Best of luck with your research!
oh, didn't think of that. Makes a lot more sense when you translate this to a large scale facility, with large reacting chambers with a layer of the alloy at the bottom fueling the burners. The recovery process would probably be 99%, and you don't have to feed more aluminum into it. Gook luck with your research
Maybe you're aware of the aluminum-air battery, in fact India already has a startup marketing that tech. The additional step of using Ga with Al to produce hydrogen wouldn't make sense for electricity production as an Al-air battery would be a cleaner route for that, but if your goal is H for heating or use in a fuel cell, or even ICE tech ha! Then Ga Al is really nice.
I'm curious about the method of recovery for the gallium and aluminum oxide, especially as it pertains to separating the two.
Where does the aluminum go? I just didn’t totally understand that part of the video! The aluminum left the Ga somehow and you were left with GA and H2O despite some of the H being burnt off?
This is super cool, I love that the gallium isn't consumed. I think I'd rather see fuel made from garbage with gasification though so we can recycle the aluminum. Aluminum is a great metal.
yeah... nice reaction, but aluminum is NOT garbarge !
Jea and you input energy and use fuel to make aluminium from bauxite aka aluminium ore and then you return it to being an oxide just to make hydrogen
Again nice reaction but you need a lot of fuel just to make aluminium in the first place so it's probably better to just resmelt aluminium
Anulium is the berst!
@@davidharvey573 foil from tacos at the gas station are
still,not garbage useful-ness wise.
My main issues with this hydrogen production method is that it’s energy intensive. Like using electrolysis for hydrogen sourcing. Large scale it’s a greener hydrogen source than nat gas but only if the aluminum was produced green. Global aluminum demand is already pretty high and the recyclability of aluminum is pretty good. It’s mathematically energy cheaper to remelt aluminum than it is to reduce aluminum from ore. I never see this method used for industrial H2 production but rather as a H2 source for small scale labs kinda like how zinc is used
You use all the lower grade recyclables for this sort of thing, harvest the al oxyde "concentrate" at the other end of the process and send it out to be electrolyzed into solid aluminium all over again.. Still an energetic net loss (of sorts) but not by much since you'd basically be replacing ore with "battery waste" and skipping all the steps that involve producing said ore.
Yes I agree, producing aluminum is very energy intensive and that isn't even talking about the energy in mining. This is one of the reasons why aluminum was one of the first things we started recycling. Saved so much energy recycling it than making it from ore. I have no idea how much energy you could get out of the aluminum vs. how much energy it takes to make it, But my guess is not enough.
It looks like the reaction releases a lot of heat. That heat could be put to use in a factory that produces and stores hydrogen.
@@gmc9753 Yes, if anything waste heat can be used to cycle your gallium around and whatnot.
@@gmc9753 That heat is just a further loss in energetic yield. it takes 46.8 megajoules of electrical energy per kilogram of aluminum. That works out to about 1.26 MJ/mole. a mole of aluminum makes about 1.5 moles of hydrogen so for every 27 kilos of aluminum you'd get 1.5 kilos of hydrogen. The energy density of hydrogen is 142 megajoules/kg so it's a loss of 1121 megajoules. Electrolysis is 200MJ/kg of hydrogen. Finally to recycle a kilogram of aluminum is 17MJ/kg so to me there is no large scale benefit to this method unless you are small scale and don't need a dedicated supply of hydrogen. I personally use the reaction for hydrogen demonstrations but to use it as an hydrogen source say for ammonium or hydrogen steel production is irresponsible.
I'd kinda expect that it saves more net energy when scrap aluminum is recycled back into aluminum products (vs. refining brand new aluminum) than the energy you could produce by oxidizing the scrap and capturing hydrogen. But it's entirely possible that I could be proven wrong, so I suppose it's good that someone's looking into the economic feasibility of such a process.
It is just a logistics question for break even as the efficiency difference is just scale, aluminum would be useful as a air aluminum battery - the regeneration from the waste is not an energy problem it is a logistics problem... If you have space an iron ion battery is the best as it has the most efficient cycle.
Alunium foxide is great too!
I would guess it's worse than recycling, but if you use it as a battery and keep "recharging" the same mass of aluminum it works very well. Still pure aluminum oxide is a material used in many industries and has many future potential uses.
Yeah we should work on ways to make recycling more cost efficient since the main reason we don't recycle stuff is due to it being to expensive
I think I big factor is sorting
We don't dispose of waste in an orginised way so in order to recycle it
Everything has to be sorted
And then some things need to be tested
Then theres unlabled types of plastic
Strange unusable mixtures of plastic
And unknown alloyed metals
Making it impossible to recycle them
Unless you make something like pot metal
@@grimreapybones2875 however, we do recycle most aluminum. Because its cheaper than producing it from ore.
2:23 goofy laught, the mark of a true scientist.
Just tried this out for myself, I think it’s cooler that just water and sodium. I love your vids, keep it up.
It's a good thing I keep a stockpile of Gallium for times like this.
By any chance, did you weigh how much gallium you got back from it? Even though the yield should remain 100%, it's still fairly interesting to see how much was lost in the clean-up process.
I think a fair amount of gallium was lost to the table when it was boiling/splashing out.
Since Gallium should have a higher boiling point than water, I'd assume you can get near 100% yields in an industrial setting
It sticks to surfaces as well so each time it's poured out of something it looks like a little is lost
@@iCarus_A Even in a DIY environment this seems fairly promising for a fun little hydrogen generator. Maybe could even make for a pretty decent portable power source for camping too if you could condense the design even more as aluminum waste is almost everywhere. I am not sure what to do with the aluminium hydroxide that's left, though.
@@OmniversalInsect Avoid that by using the same 2 containers for both storing the gallium and the reaction. Transfer from one to the other necessarily switches their roles.
Great content 👍🏻 just the stuff for inspiring young minds in this new energy storage mindset we are creating . Awesome
I love how you drank that water to prove that it was indeed water 😁
Could have been wodka ☝🏻he did seem less careful after drinking😄
Could also have been ZUp.
Should never drink from beakers or flasks that you use for chemistry.
Have you considered cutting a thicker piece of aluminum in a vacuum chamber to prevent it from forming the protective oxide layer and then experimenting to see it if it reacts with water etc? I know it would be difficult but you are a master of Macguyvering in a vacuum chamber!
He probably has de video already recorded and waiting to be uploaded hahah I dont think any idea using a vacuum chamber would slip off his mind
For what I understood its the oxygen in the water that forms the layer after reacting. Pre cutting it in a vacuum wouldn’t prevent that. Me thinks.
It would immediately form the Oxid Layer on contact with water, passivating the surface of the freshly cut Aluminium again. That is why you either need a strong base, which dissolves that Oxid or something to "dissolve"* the Aluminium into to get it to constantly come into contact with water.
Sorry for nerding out on that one 🤓
*its not really dissolved, as it is amalgamation and forming an Intermetal Compound.
The reaction between the aluminum and water is that the aluminum the H2O into H2, that is released into the air, and oxygen that oxidizes the aluminum, so it would work even in a vacuum, because the oxygen comes from the water, not the air
@@MacShrike that makes sense
This channel keeps surprising me with it's excellent content.
Keep going 😁
'Well it turns out there is!'...and I mentally heard the Vsauce theme song 😂😂😂
😂
I just realized this could be the new vinegar and baking soda experiment where you put it in a bottle to make it blow up a balloon.
For those wondering, if it's this simple, why isn't it used?
Bare in mind that I'm no chemist or have any scientific background on this, so please, experts feel free to correct me and add up relevant info. Sorry and thanks!
The answer is kinda in the video already - you need lots of energy to produce aluminum, so much so that it makes much more sense to recycle and reuse it rather than decomposing and turning into fuel. As aluminum is optimally recycled and has lots of uses... it just doesn't make much sense to expend it as fuel.
It might be interesting as alternative source, but tit for tat, electrolysis is still probably a better alternative in terms of total energy expenditure to produce hydrogen as fuel.
Gallium is... not quite as bad as something like lead or mercury, but also not super great. It doesn't occur naturally, as a free element in Earth's crust, but rather comes out as by-product of zinc and aluminum mining. It's valued at just bellow silver and indium, but not too much below.... so it's pretty expensive to get. Used in lots of electronics products.
Those were my thoughts exactly, thanks for pointing it out so that i dont have to.
What if they had collectors at gas pumps to empty out the leftover aluminum hydroxide for recycling while you filled up with a new tank?
@@ablasttv That's a pretty good idea, but doesn't directly attack the problem.
The real problem is that reacting gallium with aluminum to generate hydrogen is far more expensive (not only in money terms, but in everything involved) than any other form of hydrogen production... including good ol' electrolysis. So, viable alternative in emergencies perhaps, but not cost effective.
It also makes more sense to use Gallium in other applications, and just recycle aluminum into other products, rather than using both to produce hydrogen.
It's pretty interesting as an experiment though... 😀
apparently they don't think it's as profitable for the bottom line.
Many industries use heat-intensive processes that generally require the burning of fossil fuels, but a surprising green fuel alternative is emerging in the form of metal powders. Ground very fine, cheap iron powder burns readily at high temperatures, releasing energy as it oxidizes in a process that emits no carbon and produces easily collectable rust, or iron oxide, as its only emission.
Burning metal powder as fuel sounds strange, the next part of the process will be even more surprising. That rust can be regenerated straight back into iron powder with the application of electricity, and if you do this using solar, wind or other zero-carbon power generation systems, you end up with a totally carbon-free cycle. The iron acts as a kind of clean battery for combustion processes, charging up via one of a number of means including electrolysis, and discharging in flames and heat.
that's neat!
Worth subscribing the channel.. the way you make things simpler is amazing..
This method also beats out using copper (II) chloride to demonstrate aluminum's high reactivity since gallium isn't toxic like copper (II) chloride.
Pretty cool that elemental aluminum under the hood is actually quite a highly reactive metal (as this video demonstrates) even though it doesn't seem like it under normal conditions unlike other highly reactive metals such as sodium!
So I don’t know if you read comments or not, but if you do, I just wanted to tell you, thanks for the great content. You are always a personality that I look forward to seeing an upload from. Your interest in what you do makes it clear that you’re into what you’re teaching and it honestly makes learning that much more enjoyable. Keep it up, and thank you!
Great video. This guy always has some cool & sometimes weird projects. I learn something new every time I visit!
Another cool video man! Keep up the good research. Great videos and shorts!
Two points. One an awful lot of energy is wasted in the exothermic reaction so whatever reactor you build you want to take advantage of that heat. Two carefully store the aluminum oxide byproduct then using entirely renewable energy sources such as solar concentrators, solar panels, etc process the oxides back into aluminum as a form of long-term energy storage or as part of an energy cycle.
you could probably use the waste heat to pre heat the aluminum hydroxide (or the scrap aluminum or run a turbine)
Though I wonder if that can be used to separate the alloyed metals out of the aluminum, if that's the case, it would be a great step in reclaiming aluminum.
The interesting part is production - you can run a n aluminum smelter at massive scale on hydro/solar/wind, then use the aluminum gallium on demand in a small reactor (car scale) by burning or running it through a fuel cell. Essentially, aluminum becomes an infinitely recycle able battery with strong existing production and recycling infrastructure.
We don't have excess wind/hydro/solar. Until we do, were burning coal and natural gas. Wind and solar require too much area per watt to be the answer. Especially when you consider their inconsistent power output.
@@WeighedWilson The point is that we do have excess wind/solar/hydro. That occurs because of their variable power output and because demand varies quite widely throughout the day, so it makes sense to store that excess electricity production by some means. Your unfounded assertion that "Wind and solar require too much area per watt to be the answer" is utter nonsense, and it's now abundantly clear that renewables are not only essential for our futures, they are cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world.
In answer to @ethan the reaction of aluminium with water is strongly exothermic, so unless you can also capture and use that heat, the efficiency of producing Al, then reacting Ga/Al with water will be abysmally low. You'll find that direct electrolysis of excess electricity to hydrogen is a far more efficient way of storing energy.
@@WeighedWilson Nukes, geo, and hydro are the one true green. If we can get fusion to work... even better.
Hi The Action Lab,
Nice video.
Depending on the molar ratio (or the weight) of the reactants of aluminium and water you can have different outputs:
2Al + 3 H2O --> Al2O3 + 3 H2(g)
Al + 2 H2O --> Al(=O)OH + 3/2 H2(g)
Al + 3 H2O --> Al(OH)3 + 3/2 H2(g)
and
Al2O3 + 3 H2O --> 2 Al(OH)3
HO-Al=O + H2O --> Al(OH)3
You spoke about NaOH and the way it is consumed into the water decomposition reaction from aluminium by chewing the oxidized protective layer of the naked metal:
Al(OH)3 + 3 NaOH -->(NaO)3Al +3 H2O
HO-Al=O + NaOH --> NaO-Al=O + H2O --> NaO-Al(OH)2
NaO-Al(OH)2 + 2 NaOH --> (NaO)3Al + 2 H2O
and
O=Al-O-Al=O + 4 NaOH --> (NaO)2Al-O-Al(ONa)2 + 2 H2O --> 2 (NaO)2AlOH + H2O
2 (NaO)2AlOH + 2 NaOH --> 2 (NaO)3Al + 2 H2O
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Al2O3 + 6 NaOH --> 2 (NaO)3Al + 3 H2O
That is the usual NaOH prills / Al dust to declog plumbig; (beware caustic and dangerous for eyes (possible permanent blindness) and for mucosas; so wear personnal protective equipment (PPE-googles, face shield, labcoat, glooves)
--> heat,
--> soap making from greases,
--> strong base to decompose proteins by hydrolysis (like fibrous hair clogs)
--> and H2(g) generation as a foaming inside the clogging liberating some pressure with a physical action inside the clogging.
Of course you forgot the famous acidic reaction of HCl:
Al + 3 HCl --> AlCl3 + 3/2 H2(g)
and the spontaneous recycling of the HCl due to hydrolysis of certain Al salts:
AlCl3 + 3 H2O --> Al(OH)3 + 3 HCl
2 AlCl3 + 3 H2O --> Al2O3 + 6 HCl
So a little HCl or NaCl in acid media can litteraly chew through a lot of aluminium down .
Last advantages HCl is gaseous, and can be concentrated by dissolution to about 35% by weight into water (that is almost 10 M solution or 10 mols/L (350g HCl/kg water); so it could be also endlessly recycled by vaporisation and recondensation-dissolution; of course this depends onto the side reactions of the "pollutants" inside aluminium foil (there are always others metals as traces into it because it is not chemically pure (thus far from lab grade ingredient) as an industrial product and finally ending as a garbage.
The funny and beautifull part of this acidic process is that the after garbage of Al2O3 can be recycled into corrundums (saphires and rubbies of nearly all rainbow colors even colorless leuco-corrundum) but that is a totally different story flying far above most people heads.
Regards,
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)
Excellent video and nice experiment!
It's always great to learn something new! 👍
I think the challenge is the energy required to convert the aluminum to its oxide form again. With solar, this wouldn’t be an issue, as we could use electric furnaces to re-melt it.
The separation phase would be very important, but given how exothermic the reaction is, the water-gallium-aluminum would have to be cooled first before separation, or there would need to be a significant cooling component during the reaction cycle.
As long as we can recover a very high percentage of the gallium and account for the other factors, it should be possible to use it as a hydrogen extraction process. However, I don’t see that being better or less complicated than the current electrolysis process when its being run on solar.
The thing is, that aluminium was likely first purified using electrolysis.
I wonder what the efficiency of using this gallium -aluminium composite to make hydrogen would be compared to just using straight electrolysis.
Pretty poor. One commentator has pointed out that it takes 46.8 megajoules of electrical energy to produce one kilogram of aluminium and that's a lot. Reacting that aluminium with water is exothermic, so you need a means of re-using that heat otherwise you lose at lot more efficiency. Another commentator has estimated the aluminium oxide (via electrolysis →) aluminium (via Ga/Al alloy + water) → hydrogen + aluminium oxide cycle to be perhaps 20% efficient when using the generated hydrogen to create electricity. Conversely, electrolysis of water to hydrogen and then using the hydrogen to generate electricity will be around 40% to 60% efficient.
This technology is energy _storage_ not energy generation. and it only makes sense if it's easier to move aluminium from an Al production plant located near a source of excess electricity (hydro, wind, solar) to a place where it's not viable to transport hydrogen directly produced by electrolysis at the source.
@@RexxSchneider At least until you get into killer robots... imagine, as a giant mech grabs ahold of an aluminum hulled enemy destroyer and shoves it down it's gullet into its gallium stomach! :)
@@nacoran Thanks. I think that does fit nicely with my concept of a niche application.
I've been looking into this for a while now, and am planning on creating an engine or power source of some kind, that runs on aluminum. I live on a farm with loads of scrap metal, and having all this energy on hand is really useful.
Well played old bean. Love your channel. Keep up the good work.
Man sometimes I really wish I had my own gallium to play with
It's available on Amazon. Not too expensive, either.
order it online
Although I enjoy your content, it would have been amazing to see a Gallium-water control as well as the Aluminium-water control you presented :) Also, as a side note, Aluminium is an amphoteric metal, which means that hydrogen is produced in the presence of either an acid OR a base (naturally, in an aqueous solution) :)
This is an amazing video. Thank you for making this!
Energy outputs are one of my favorite topics. I love hearing about new and innovative forms of energy!
The issue, of course, is that the energy it takes to make aluminum and the efficiency of the produced aluminum make make this not viable-and it still takes energy. It isn’t a source of energy, it’s a storage mechanism
better to use this than bury it in the ground yes
@@AC-pn4tk 60% of Aluminum is recycled in the US already, and it is highly recyclable. In fact it takes 1/20th the energy to recycle Aluminum that it does to convert Aluminum from Bauxite.
But here is the real kicker-the way to reduce Aluminum Oxide to Aluminum Metal is by getting it to react with carbon, producing carbon dioxide.
You might as well burn the hydrocarbons directly. You produce the same end product without the costly intermediary, and we already have the logistics for that worked out.
Super interesting! You do a great job, and I really enjoy your efforts. I always learn something useful and that matters. Great health to all.
Very good video. The only thing missing was a description of the byproducts of the reaction.
THIS IS AMAZING. I'LL BUY SOME GALLIUM INSTANTLY.
Amulinum works better
The excess energy is coming from the aluminum production. It takes a lot of energy to break the aluminum oxide bond to produce pure aluminum, so no, between the energy loss of the aluminum going back to aluminum oxide and the loss of some of the gallium in the process, I'm sure it turns out being an energy net loss.
if it wasnt it would just generate energy
The idea isn’t to make Al and use it as fuel. It’s to reduce landfill waste. Anyway it isn’t a good idea to do this because Al can be recycled over and over again.
@@BrianSu I agree. It is a disgrace when aluminium ends up in landfills. In fact, a lot of "waste" should be regarded "high content ore". Not just for Al, but also Fe, CH4, and what not.
@@BrianSu If you're trying to reduce landfill waste, why not just recycle the aluminium? That's a far more efficient use of the metal. There is nothing about this technology that makes it more likely that the idiots who send aluminium to landfill will change their habits.
I worked in a placed where they coated antennae dishes with aluminum by spraying aluminum dust and igniting it as it comes out of a spray gun. What a fascinating metal.
I read a paper that describes such a mix of metals as an "Amalgam" Now Amalgams are normally thought to be based on Mercury. But some of us think an Amalgam is the suspension of one metal in another with particles that display a gradient of dissolution usually at room temperature, making it different from an alloy.
But isn't it more efficient to clean up and re-melt the waste Al to make new Al?
It is, because recycling it uses up much less heat energy than making it from ore.
🤔.. so. A couple weeks or few ago, he throws a party for time travelers. He doesn't show the footage of who shows up. Now he's making fuel for a time traveling car.
Pretty sure he just doesn't want the government knowing he's skipping around in time.
He better hope they're not as smart as me!
Your reactions are so childish and genuine! I love it!
My friends gonna' love it! He's been talking about a home project of his about making hydrogen. He can't speak English, so I'll have to show it to him in person and explain, but I think he'll like it. Thanks ActionLabMan!!!
I would suggest that zinc in dilute hydrochloric acid is a more controllable mechanism for producing hydrogen. It's been a favourite in school laboratories for decades.
@@RexxSchneider Thanks! I'll let my buddy know!
I knew that Aluminum is energy-intensive, what about Gallium? Is it something that requires some nasty open-pit mining? I assume it does.
It is reusable because it is not entirely consumed in this reaction so that’s a plus.
Also if it works with gallium it probably works with other things that are less "toxic" in large quantities.
@@westonding8953 very big plus!
@@robertsmith4681 absolutely.
@@robertsmith4681 Gallium is not toxic.
It's a little concerning you show yourself drinking from a beaker. Unless the beaker is brand new it's incredibly dangerous to drink from a beaker. Some chemicals only require trace amounts to kill you or give you cancer. Since your audience probably has a decent portion that isn't familiar with lab safety it might be good to put in a warning against doing that.
I think most who watch this knows how to use their brain. And if they don't, well tough shit. Not everything needs a warning label.
@@-Devy- yeah we all know you certainly needed a warning label.
We use pipette's in our school
If they need a warning for that then its natural selection
You're wrong, also btw breathing air can cause cancer, so I guess you should stop breathing as well.
This showcases ultra resourcefulness!
Formidable ! Merci Action Lab !😀
Hello, this was fun, i hope we can do it again😊
It's always a good day when you learn something extremely useful like this. Thanks for enlightening me! One question though. I assume that the oxide is a waste product. This should be saved and recycled. On the base reaction what base gives the best result and what is the byproduct? Thanks again.
always awsome content !!
I got a scholarship into space camp after I made project that involved gallium and aluminum. That fact that what I did a few years back might be a fuel source is very exciting, only problem I could see with this so far is making a tank store so much aluminum
The alloy also works great for chemistry for gentle reductions. The amount of gallium needed is quite small, the ideal consistency is like crumbly metal sand. Mercury works quite well for this too, but its a toxic metal.
I hope this can be used more in society
2:14 **Gets the beakers mixed up**
This man bring new info that r I never heard about it. U r video's r amazing 🤩.
This is the new age of 'better living through chemistry'. Awesome stuff. Thanks.
Nice shirt! Thanks for the video. Best regards.
You don't need gallium. You can use KOH or NaOH solution to produce hydrogen from aluminium.
Better to recycle the aluminum back to some product. Because it takes a huge amount of energy when we form pure Aluminum from it's oxides.
4:11 "Once you've already made the Aluminum, that would normally be thrown away …"
"I beg your pardon?" *in all European languages*
I’ve read a company was setting itself up to do this but ended up going out of business before it ever got going
It sounds like a great energy source for the apocalypse
The sip of water you took at 2:17 was mesmerising.
great content thanks
It sounds like something that has a very particular application like time travel
Remember kids, never drink from anything in a lab, even if the container had been cleaned. Better to be safe than sorry.
This also is true for magnesium. Magnesium metal fires actually intensify when water is used, but metallic magnesium still has almost no reaction with water at room temp. This is also due to oxide passivation
Mind Blown! Thankyou for such interesting information. Be careful with the Gallium, very poisonous.
0:24 it's not the hydrogen that explodes. In fact, nothing explodes.
Search Thunderfoot's video on it , this is mind blowing.
Ok, here watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8
Actually it is the coulomb explosion as I show here czcams.com/video/XWQWu3vRyQk/video.html
I love how he fist drinks the water to show its regular water
Really nice!! Well, scaling up depends on how much Gallium we have fairly easily available. For this, I habe no idea. But I like "recycling" Aluminum like this😎
The CIA agent waiting outside your house right now:
We need someone with a movie accurate Delorean to make it run off aluminum. Just one step closer to perfecting time travel via spid
Peoples: Cool way to recycle.
Picasso's of the modern days: NOOOO! WHY ARE YOU BURNING ART!!!
Business men: Hmmmm, How can I capitalize this...
How did you treat your amalgamation to purify for reuse, surely not just filtering? Had the aluminum been used up?
The Aluminum Oxide on the surface of Aluminum foil and cans is the same Aluminum Oxide as Rubies and Sapphires, just not crystalized in large masses. So it's second only in hardness to Diamond, rather chemical resistant, and very tough. You can actually make gemstones with a blowtorch by getting this oxide to melt, fuse, and crystalize. I've even seen people do it in a microwave oven.
I would like to see the stochiometric equation to visualize the equilavence betwee start and end products.
We can use super low grade non recycleable (or hard to) aluminum scrap for this. Would be best if we can use bauxite straught away.
I only see one major problem with using this on a large scale, and it’s the fact that hydrogen is extremely nasty to work with. Bein a really small molecule, it loves to slip through the tiniest cracks in pressure vessels, and it’s nearly impossible to store it long-term. It’s also a bit troublesome to work with it considering all the water vapor involved. It may be doable, though, considering that we somehow managed to get wood gas to work on a large scale, which is way worse than hydrogen.
But the DeLorean was not running on hydrogen. The upgraded had a fusion reactor, it is even written on the white cover as : Mr Fusion :)
How did you filter it in the end to get the gallium back?
In India just a few days ago CSIR(Coucil of Scientific and Industrial Reserch) and KPIT together have made a Hydrogen fuel cell based bus. Maybe this technique can be used to obtain hydrogen for the vehicle. Green Hydrogen that is produced through electrolysis of water is currently quite expensive.
I'd love to see you convert this into electricity by using a PEM fuel cell!
I used to do this with just alluminum and the HCl you buy to clean your house.
I always thought it was the HCl which reacted to form H2, not the water
Hi
Very interesting and I can see it could have uses as a short term emergency supply but as you said the energy comes from the manufacturing of the aluminium which is very energy hungry, probably better to recycle the aluminium into new products
Keep up the good work your vids are always interesting
For the reaction with sodium hydroxide, it doesn't consume the sodium hydroxide.
It will concert the aluminum into aluminum hydroxide and the atom of sodium react with the water to form hydrogen, so the sodium hydroxide is just a catalyst in the reaction and you don't need to add more during the reaction to keep it going
Hey awesome reaction! Would the Ga be needed if this was preformed in space?
I love how he drinks the water to prove that it's regular water 😂
It isn't entirely true that you can recover all of the gallium. You can also use lye instead of gallium and on a large scale is equally recoverable and far more available. Gallium is already a pretty expensive material and if it starts being used large scale it's scarcity will become a problem.
Hold on now. Back to the future was accurate all along. Doc used soda (water) and aluminum as fuel. Gotta love those movies.
Al powder is used in thermite so it has available energy to "burn"
Al -air batteries are being researched and implemented.
That's pretty interesting. I was just trying to explain to someone a few days ago the thermite reaction and how reactive aluminum is. How it can reduce iron oxide back to iron by being so reactive it steals the oxygen away from it.
That "aluminum" can be anything as long as it's more reactive than iron.
Thank you teacher👍👍👍
Apparently you can break down algae and separate the lipids out of it to make fuel. I saw the DOD totally shut the feasibility on that down, but it sounds more feasible than wind and solar.
Gallium alloyed with other ferrous materials can be looped in tubes surrounded by industrial neodynium magnests to produce electricity!
Any chance you could show us the casimir effect in your vacuum?
maybe this could be used in small facilities to produce hydrogen without electricity or somewhere were there is scrap aluminium
Please make a video showing how to recover the gallium.
Quick question. For the reaction you said 3 to 1 Gallium to aluminum is the reaction 6Ga + 2Al + 3H2O → 6Ga+ 3H2 + Al2O?
Although most aluminum is recycled, the product Al(OH)3 has uses as fire retardant and feedstock for manufacture of other chemicals.