Clean energy claim

[wrecktech]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18700750/page/2/

Thoughts?

[competentone]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18700750/

The link above should bring you to page one of the article.

The article is about using the energy available when aluminum is oxidized as a fuel source. It's not a new idea.

As is noted, the problem is still in the cost of aluminum.

With the specific technology discussed in the article, it is actually really inefficient to use the aluminum to create hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen in an internal combustion engine or use it to power a fuel cell.

If you can reduce the cost of producing aluminum, it makes more sense to just build aluminum batteries (they've been around for years) and just run electric motors direct from the batteries.

The problem though is the cost of recycling the waste product of aluminum oxide back into aluminum metal. Low cost electricity (to create low cost aluminum) looks to be the only way to really make the oxidation of aluminum a practical fuel source.

[red-beard]

The problem with almost all of these "new" sources of clean energy is that they are a storage system, not a source.