Wire Power | Green Energy News

September 18, 2005 – Vol.10 No.26

WIRE POWER.

This publication has included two stories in recent weeks about how light metals, such as zinc, aluminum or magnesium could be used to generate hydrogen from water. Here’s another.

Engineuity of Ashkelon, Israel, says it has developed a method to generate hydrogen on demand and on board a vehicle using aluminum or magnesium wire. The hydrogen generated, they say, could be used as fuel for an internal combustion engine (ICE) or a fuel cell.

(They seem to prefer the combustion engine since they’re cheap and readily available.)

The chemistry the startup company uses is the same as in the previous stories: pure metal in a bath of electrolyte, such as water, will oxidize and release hydrogen. (Presumably the pure metal acts as a sacrificial anode and a cathode, which doesn’t oxidize, is employed as well.)

Engineuity also says that the reaction will create steam along with the hydrogen and both can be fed into the cylinders of an engine and ignited. What’s more the company has devised a method to refuel the vehicle via a supply of metal wire.

The vehicle would contain a device for rolling wire into a coil. In the refueling process pure metal wire would be fed into the vehicle’s coil. Spent metal oxide would also be removed - sucked out - to be returned to the metal wire supplier for recycling. (The company doesn’t say if more water would need to be added.)

As the car is driven wire is fed into a reaction chamber where hydrogen and steam are made on demand. On demand hydrogen generation eliminates hydrogen storage problems in vehicles.

The volume in the vehicle needed to contain the metal wire would be about the same as a gasoline fuel tank, but the weight of the wire coil device would be three times greater. Metal wire fuel would cost about the same as gasoline at present prices but would be recyclable.

All of this sound a little bizarre, a little incredible?

A few references add some credibility to the company’s claims.

One of the company’s founders has recently retired from the Weizmann Institute of Science. It was Weizmann labs which developed the method of purifying zinc with solar energy to be used later in a similar process to generate hydrogen from water.

Further, seed money for the company has been from Ormat Technologies which is well respected in geothermal energy.

Visit Engineuity at http:// www.engineuity.co.il/ and Weizmann Institute of Science at http://www.weizmann.ac.il/ and their Solar Research Facilities and the SolarTower of Power at http://www.weizmann.ac.il/ESER/solar_page.html and Ormat at http://www.ormat.com/