Zinc: Tried and True. A Simple, Clean, Quiet Carrier of Energy

February 24, 2007 – Vol.11 No.48

ZINC: TRIED AND TRUE, A SIMPLE, CLEAN, QUIET CARRIER OF ENERGY.

Got a cabin in the woods that you’d like to electrify without investment in small wind or solar, or the noise of a conventional gas generator? How about a boat or a recreational vehicle you’d like to add power to but don’t want the fumes? How about the need for back-up or emergency power at your home or business?

Ever consider the possibilities of zinc?

In fact, most of us have been using zinc as a fuel for most of our lives. There’s nothing new about utilizing zinc as fuel. For years we’ve been buying disposable flashlight batteries that get their power from the oxidation of pure zinc. The electrochemical reaction, known as galvanism, has been known for centuries, perhaps first originating in Baghdad. (Yes, that city in Iraq, but that’s another story.)

Even in recent years zinc has been used as a replenishable fuel to power cars and buses, motor scooters, and for back-up power generation and other applications. Yet the technology for zinc as fuel for metal-air fuel cells has never caught on. Most of the zinc-air fuel cell companies formed in the 1990’s went belly up. (Yet some still hang in there, Evionics and Electric-Fuel (now Arotech), for example.)

Now another company is giving zinc a whirl. Power Air Corporation has been developing a small line of portable generators that will be fueled with zinc pellets. The company has not announced when its products will be available for sale, but has released some details about their Zinc Air Fuel Cell generators.

There will be two, 1.25 and 2.5 kilowatt units that can be hooked up in parallel for 2.5 and 5.0 kilowatts of power respectively. Both will have AC/DC power and be about the size of a small conventional gas generator.

The units will be exhaust-free, can be used indoors or out, make little noise and are refueled by adding more pellets.

Of course the company has more information to add to its official statements, like runtimes, availability of zinc pellets, price of the machines and whether they’ll be offering zinc recycling.

The emissions of zinc fuel - greenhouse gases or otherwise - are related to the mining of zinc, processing it, and recycling it, if that is part of the program. With recycling the zinc becomes a carrier of energy: The energy used in that process is the same energy you’d use to run your television set or refrigerator.

If there is a drawback with zinc electrochemical devices it’s this: once the electrochemical reaction starts it’s difficult to stop. Typically, if the power generated is not used it’s wasted, along with the supply of zinc pellet fuel. Right now it’s unknown whether Power Air has addressed this issue or is ignoring it.

Ignoring the issue isn’t such a bad thing, however. If the zinc pellets are cheap enough consumers won’t care. Others might be inventive and build zinc air fuel cell/battery hybrid systems where unused zinc-derived power is used to recharge a battery bank.

The technology that Power Air is using is under full and exclusive license from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy. Visit Power Air at http://www.poweraircorp.com/ Electric-Fuel at http://www.electric-fuel.com/ Evionyx at http://www.evionyx.com/