Aluminum hydrolyzes water into Hydrogen and Oxygen; but an oxide layer forms and that limits the yield.
Hydrogen plasma removes oxygen from Aluminum ( titanium, maybe graphene oxide wafers, and from).
Hydrogen plasma underwater creates various reactive Hydrogen molecules that further purify water.
Aluminum treated with hydrogen plasma quickly reoxidizes if not immersed in water.
Is hydrogen plasma + aluminum a good solution for green hydrogen?
https://news.mit.edu/2025/study-shows-making-hydrogen-soda-c...
my take though is that aluminum is made electrolytically at great energy expense so at best this is a way to transport hydrogen in metallic form which could be relevant since transporting and storing hydrogen is problematic. (I think how most metals will react with acids to make hydrogen [1] but Al reacts with bases to produce hydrogen too)
The demand is high so there is a lot of research on ways to make hydrogen, especially tuning up hydrolysis but also finding it underground [2] so call it high impact but high competition.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/12/2009/2009-...
[2] https://www.eenews.net/articles/gold-hydrogen-the-next-clean...
theandrewbailey•7mo ago
Wait, where are you getting hydrogen plasma? The sun?
westurner•7mo ago
Couldn't the system be bootstrapped by scratching up an aluminum can, pouring in water, and turning a wheel with a handle or wind or water or gravity or so on?
And then some (?) of the produced hydrogen would be used for hydrogen plasma to refinish the aluminum
AnimalMuppet•7mo ago
westurner•7mo ago
And, Is hydrogen plasma through and within the water worth it from a just hydrogen yield perspective?
When I asked an AI about research in this - after an LLM suggested hydrogen plasma for deoxidizing titanium (instead of yttrium) the other day - there were a few results; which alone doesn't indicate viability.
What do you do with the aluminum slurry from hydrogen plasma etching and IDK ultrasound?
Ctrl-F aluminum:
"Aluminum formate Al(HCOO)3: Earth-abundant, scalable, & material for CO2 capture" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33501189 .. https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#story-33501182
"Superconducting nanostrip single photon detectors made of aluminum thin-films" https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#story-42647229
"Green steel from red mud through climate-neutral hydrogen plasma reduction" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06901-z ..
> Red mud [from aluminum production] consists of up to 60% iron oxide. Melting the mud in an electric arc furnace using a plasma containing 10% hydrogen reduces it to liquid iron and liquid oxides, allowing the iron to be easily extracted. The plasma reduction technique takes 10 minutes and produces iron so pure, say the researchers, it can be processed directly into steel. And the no-longer-corrosive metal oxides solidify on cooling, so they can be transformed into glass-like material that could be used as a filling material in the construction industry.
...
"New stainless steel pulls green hydrogen directly out of seawater" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43991630