Copper market’s biggest whale fuels speculation of a major shift
The world’s single biggest buyer of copper, State Grid Corp. of China, has slowed its purchases of copper wire this year.
A new, lightweight aluminum alloy developed by Japanese researchers is able to store hydrogen for fuel cells.
This is good news because aluminum-based alloy hydrides, as opposed to magnesium, sodium and boron versions, are light weight, non-toxic to plants and animals, and contain no volatile gas products, except hydrogen.
“Although its synthesis requires very extreme conditions and its hydrogen content is low, our new compound showed that an aluminum-based alloy hydride is achievable,” said Hiroyuki Saitoh, lead author of the paper.
“Based on what we’ve learned from this first step, we plan to synthesize similar materials at more moderate conditions—products that hopefully will prove to be very effective at storing hydrogen.”
Read more here or go directly to the scientific paper.
2 Comments
Sutjipto
Good move then seek better ways to make hydrogen simply with super capacity battery.
frankinca
Don’t buy AA right now in anticipation of aluminum based batteries. The reason for the research is admirable but the result is too far from the goal. Like fusion as a energy source it still reaches too far in the world’s present knowledge of the atomic structures and containment of energy activties.