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Spain's "265438+20th Century Weekly" reported on September 20th that Purdue University announced that its researchers have developed a new low-cost hydrogen production technology, which has a wide range of potential energy uses, including providing energy for submarines and providing fuel for automobiles.
This technology produces hydrogen by injecting water into aluminum gallium alloy. After aluminum gallium alloy reacts with water, aluminum decomposes water, takes away oxygen and releases hydrogen. Now, researchers have developed a new process for manufacturing Al-Ga alloy particles, which can put the synthesized gold particles into a water tank for reaction, thus generating the required amount of hydrogen.
In this technology, gallium is a very important factor because it can prevent the formation of oxide film on the surface of aluminum block. Usually, a thin film will appear during the oxidation of aluminum to prevent the interaction between oxygen and aluminum. By removing this oxide film, oxidation can continue until all aluminum is used to produce hydrogen.
Because this technology can produce hydrogen according to demand, there is no need to store and transport hydrogen, which is the biggest obstacle to the development of "hydrogen economy" In addition, because gallium is an inert metal, it can be recovered and reused.
Jerry, a technology developer? Woodall said: "The recovery and reuse of gallium is very important, because compared with other metals, the price of gallium is very high. If it can be recycled, the cost of this hydrogen production technology will be greatly reduced and it can be widely used. At the same time, this technology can use low-purity gallium, and its cost is much lower than that of high-purity gallium used in the electronics industry. "
On the other hand, when Al-Ga alloy reacts with water, aluminum becomes alumina, and waste alumina can be recycled and processed into aluminum. Recycling aluminum is cheaper than mining bauxite to produce aluminum, which further increases the competitiveness of this hydrogen production technology.
Recently, researchers found that the particles made of molten alloy by rapid cooling contain 28% aluminum and 72% gallium, while the manufacturing process of alloy is changed by slow cooling, and the aluminum-gallium ratio of the obtained alloy particles is almost opposite, which can react with water to generate hydrogen, alumina and heat.
Scientists at Purdue University in the United States found that the contents of aluminum and gallium in Al-Ga alloy particles obtained by slow cooling method were 80% and 20% respectively. Woodall said: "80-20% of alloy particles are very stable in dry air and can react with water quickly to generate hydrogen."
This new hydrogen production technology has a very broad potential use. For example, hydrogen can replace gasoline as the fuel of automobile internal combustion engine, so the only waste it emits is water. The application method is also very simple. Just transform the internal combustion engine and let it use hydrogen. Therefore, it is only necessary to change the gasoline injection port into the hydrogen injection port.
However, it is still necessary to make a large-scale recovery plan to convert alumina into aluminum and recover gallium. Therefore, it is necessary to build infrastructure factories similar to nuclear power plants or wind power plants. The researchers found that the cost of recovering alumina by using standard industrial technology equipment is much lower than the original estimate, so the cost of hydrogen production is very competitive compared with gasoline.
The research road of developing "hydrogen economy" by using new technologies is quite long. It all started in 1967, when Woodall did a study for IBM and found that the combination of aluminum, gallium and water could produce hydrogen.