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An RC Car That Runs On Soda Can Rings
polyp2000 writes with an Engadget excerpt to inspire instant toy envy: "A pair of Spanish engineers have recently unveiled the dAlH2Orean (see what they did there?), a R/C car that runs on aluminum. Dropping a few soda can tabs into a tank of sodium hydroxide produces enough hydrogen to power the little speedster for 40 minutes — at almost 20mph."
FTA: There may be another way to transport electricity, using the Aluminum battery as a medium. Each kilogram of Aluminum produced represents about 14 KWh of electricity, used to produce the ingots. This means that if we ship 20,000 Tons of Aluminum to Europe, we would be transporting the equivalent of 20,000,000 * 14 KWh of electricity. This is 280 GWh of electricity, enough to power 500,000 households in Europe for a year. The question, of course, is how can we free this electricity from the Aluminum transported. Here comes the Aluminum battery. Using Aluminum electrodes in a simple electrochemical cell, filled with seawater or Sodium Hydroxide solution and using a Nickel-Manganese counter electrode, the Aluminum will be oxidized to Aluminum Hydroxide and give off 3 electrons per Al atom used up in the reaction. A large part of the electricity stored in the above 20,000 tons of Aluminum can in this way be released, generating about 280 GWh of electricity and about 60,000 tons of Al(OH)3 sludge. This sludge could be recycled back to Iceland to generate again 20,000 tons of Aluminum to start the process of electricity generation anew. http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=717
Hehe, this gives me the opportunity to pass along an old favorite to a much younger generation. We were doing this around the time that today's college students were being born. The best part is that you can still get all the pieces for this (unlike many stories 20 years before my youth, which centered around things like large gunpowder fireworks and F-size model rocket engines).
If you were to take a square of aluminum foil, fold it diagonally in half to create a crease, fill the crease with lye (available as Red Devil drain cleaner, among others), and the roll the whole thing up like a... uh... hand-rolled cigarette, and then to fill a (preferably small, 500 mL or less) bottle with a fair amount of water, into which you then place the Drano Reefer before quickly (but firmly) closing the cap and throwing it far, far away, you'd get the Drano Reefer bomb.
The hydrogen comes from the water; the NaOH is merely a catalyst preventing the 2Al + 6H2O -> 2Al(OH)3 + 3H2 reaction from getting stopped by aluminum oxide films, etc. Done right, the gas pressure will rupture the bottle, while the hydrogen produced will add to any flame. For obvious reasons, not recommended for glass bottles.
For an encore, take a metal can (soup, tomato, soda, whatever) and add roughly 1:1 ratio by volume of brake fluid and pool chlorinator (the "shock treatment" is preferred for its high free chlorine content). Adding fluid to chlorinator produces a delayed reaction; adding chlorinator to fluid produces a much faster reaction. Work with the proportions to produce the desired effect - if done properly, you can reliably produce any effect from smoke-only to rapid bonfire. Once you're comfortable with that, you can start working with paper or styrofoam cups to produce a self-immolating container.
producing aluminum from boxite is extremely energy intensive. requires loads of electricity.
we recycle aluminum not because it is of scarcity, but rather because the energy invested to produce it from boxite is 'saved'.