Do you remember when we told you about the scientists from Purdue who were working on a technique to produce hydrogen on-demand from aluminum using gallium and water? It seems that there are some enterprising individuals who were intrigued by the work of Dr. Woodall's experiments. Take a look at this Instructable, which teaches you how to capture some hydrogen using a similar technique, this time using strips of aluminum from soda cans covered with a "liquid metal" which are then immersed in water. The reaction that takes place releases hydrogen at a rapid rate, according to the article. We're not sure that this process is cost effective or practical for large-scale capture of hydrogen, but we do think that the technique is interesting enough to share.

Note that the comments for the article indicate that the gallium is recoverable. Any aluminum used will be lost, as it is the reaction of the aluminum and water which releases the hydrogen.

[Source: Instructable]

Anybody still interested in seeing a car run on water? Yeah, me too. We don't mean a car with an engine running on steam, either; we are talking about hydrogen. So far, we've seen nothing that leads us to believe that hydrogen can be separated from water quickly or efficiently enough to extract the amount of hydrogen needed to run a fuel cell or a hydrogen-powered engine. Researchers at Purdue seem to think that they have a potential breakthrough on their hands, though. Using just aluminum, gallium and water, the researchers can envision everything from cars to submarines powered by clean hydrogen from water using this safe, efficient process. Maybe.

What do we mean by maybe? The potential problem could be in the aluminum. Scientists have known for a long time that hydrogen could be extracted using a process like this. The breakthrough that Purdue is touting is in the gallium, which protects the layer of aluminum below the oxidation. This means that the process still uses up the source aluminum. The question which needs to be answered now is how much aluminum is being used, and how can it be recovered. Nanotechnology seems to be key to the process that Purdue is using to make this happen, as well as the technique to hopefully recycle the aluminum used in the process. We look forward to seeing what else the researchers from Purdue are able to show.

[Source: Purdue via Engadget]