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Move over, hydrogen: magnesium power’s here … maybe
July 7th, 2010 by GenePodcast: Play in new window | Download
When people talk about alternative energy, hydrogen often comes up. How about magnesium? We’ll see. Today, on Engineering Works!
Magnesium is nifty stuff. Pure magnesium is a silvery metal, and you probably remember from high school chemistry that it burns with a hot white flame.
While a lot of research has already gone into using hydrogen to store energy, either directly as a fuel or as part of fuel cell systems, some researchers think we should be looking at magnesium as a way to store energy. Magnesium stores about 10 times as much energy as hydrogen. And there’s enough magnesium in seawater to provide energy for 300,000 years.
Engineers at a Canadian company are working on a fuel cell that uses magnesium, air and water to produce electricity. An Israeli researcher has come up with a magnesium-based battery sort of like the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries we all know about. And a California researcher is working on a way to use magnesium to produce hydrogen for fuel.
All of this sounds good, but there’s a problem. It takes a lot of energy to purify magnesium to a form we can use. Maybe more than we’d get back. One researcher in Japan thinks he has the answer: solar energy to power a laser that would give us the almost 6,700° F. heat needed. We’ll see how that turns out.
Our magnesium power is somewhere in the future, so we’re done. See you next time.
Engineering Works! is made possible by Texas A&M Engineering and produced by KAMU-FM in College Station. Learn more about engineering. Visit us on the World Wide Web. http://engineeringworks.tamu.edu
Start the discussion: What do you think about magnesium’s potential as a direct energy source or a way to store energy? We’d like to know, and we bet others would, too.
Learn more:
http://www.economist.com/node/15939644
http://www.physorg.com/news191259549.html
http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_magnesium_energy_cycle_5887
Sounds like they have a long way to go before a decision can be made as to whether magnesium is more commercially viable as compared to hydrogen.
There’s no question that this technology is a long way from being implemented widely, but it’s a useful thing to think about, if for no other reason than because it offers another alternative source of energy. And apparently a denser source than hydrogen.
Move over magnesium
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I first read about it at nasa institute for advanced concepts about 15 years ago under funded studies.
Just another technology to stay on shelf forever.
Molten magnesium battery being considered by new york for green energy storage.
13,000 mega watts and 60,000 square meters.
If the molten metal battery technologies have 20 times the energy storage capacity of lithium , why not adapt these batteries to automobiles.
The molten salt battery (zebra) has been used in automotive application , so why not molten metal ( sodium/ sulfur and magnesium/ antimony).
When burning magnesium water becomes a fuel. Anyone know the ratio of water that will burn to ratio of magnesium consumed????
SIMPLIER QUESTION
WHAT IS MECHANISM THAT SPLITS THE WATER INTO HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN IN A MAGNESIUM FIRE.
NOT ELECTROLISIS.
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