Centauri's Thoughts

This is great! The more processes they find to liberate hydrogen, the better.

This one uses two sets of specially formulated aluminum, one acts as a base, and one as an acid, and they break the bonds in water molecules to liberate the hydrogen.

This process happens at room temperature and without input of more energy.

Read the full details on physorg.com here.

Here is a great solution to the recovery of precious metals from E-waste:
Old newspaper could be worth its weight in gold.

Old electronic consumer devices such as computers, televisions and mobile phones are an important source of precious metals, which are used in their manufacture. But recovering the metals isn't easy and usually requires large quantities of chemicals that are known to damage the environment.

Now a team of Japanese chemists says it can do a similar job using inexpensive and renewable materials.

Katsutoshi Inoue and colleagues at Saga University in Japan, crushed and washed old newspapers and then combined the pulp with a chlorine compound.

Read the whole thing: Recover precious metals

They just keep coming up with new metal alloys. The newest is Aluminum-yttrium-nickel.

If the new material performs up to expectations, it could have a dramatic impact on the performance and efficiency of both commercial and military aircraft. Jones said that Pratt &Whitney engineers estimated that replacing various components in one particular jet engine with the Al-Y-Ni alloy could potentially lighten the engine by 350 pounds. That's an astronomical weight reduction in aircraft design, where engineers are typically happy to reduce the weight of components by a few pounds here or there.

The entire article is here

Chemistry has always fascinated me, and while I had it in high school, and understand the basics, the finer points of chemical reactions, specifically, why certain reactions take place over others, is something I suppose I would know better with a college course or much more reading. Specifically, as it relates to Space Sciences, things like the removal of oxygen bound to ores for purification, and reversal of systems.


Today I read about the use of Sodium Alanate (NaAlH4) As a way to carry hydrogen safely, for liberation later as fuel. Also in these articles, is the discussion of Titanium doping to make this process more efficient. In addition to Zinc and Magnesium, these are making for many ways to use hydrogen that is chemically bonded with something rather than trying to move and store dangerous H2 gas.


As I kept reading, I hit WebElements.com for some more answers. In particular, it listed the process of reducing Bauxite (A type of common ore containing Aluminum)

Aluminium is mined in huge scales as bauxite (typically Al2O3.2H2O). Bauxite contains Fe2O3, SiO2, and other impurities. In order to isolate pure aluminium, these impurities must be removed from the bauxite. This is done by the Bayer process. This involves treatment with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution, which results in a solution of sodium aluminate and sodium silicate. The iron remains behind as a solid. When CO2 is blown through the resulting solution, the sodium silicate stays in solution while the aluminium is precipitated out as aluminium hydroxide. The hydroxide can be filtered off, washed, and heated to form pure alumina, Al2O3.


The next stage is formation of pure aluminium. This is obtained from the pure Al2O3 by an electrolytic method. Electrolysis is necessary as aluminium is so electropositive. It seems these days that electrolysis of the hot oxide in a carbon lined steel cell acting as the cathode with carbon anodes is most common.

I knew about the process of using an acid with metals, but I was not familiar with bases and those reactions. I suppose I will be studying more, as these refining processes would be quite useful to know for mineral refinement processes on lunar ores. With just a few of the basic elements, and some knowledge, there should be no problem in refining metals, and getting PLENTY of oxygen for breathing. (And retaining the rest of the chemicals for re-use, like the Hydrogen)

Just a quick note here.

The research has yielded evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.

I'm not sure if this could ever be made viable or not, but, in general, research is good!


It uses Deuterium. Deuterium contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Normal hydrogen contains only one proton in its nucleus. So called "heavy water".


I got to wondering, just how much of this stuff is available?

A cubic kilometer of seawater would contain enough heavy hydrogen to provide

a thousand years' worth of power for the United States.

I guess that answers that!


there Full story is here