Critical Need
Hydrogen is a clean energy carrier that has the potential to revolutionize how the world uses and stores energy for everything from emergency backup generators and municipal power production to global transportation and shipping industries. But carbon-free hydrogen is currently expensive to produce and difficult to store at a high volumetric energy density. Meanwhile, materials with inherently high hydrogen storage densities—including aluminum, plastics, and biomass—are either sitting idle in landfills, or worse, polluting natural ecosystems around the world.

Technology Vision
Aluminum waste is abundant and highly energy-dense, with roughly double the volumetric energy density of diesel. A stable aluminum fuel can be produced directly from scrap using a fully recoverable and recyclable catalyst. This fuel reacts with water to produce clean hydrogen gas, heat, and an aluminum oxyhydroxide byproduct, which is environmentally benign and used in various industrial processes. Hydrogen can be generated this way for less than $0.50 per kilogram and stored at an effective volumetric energy density of 36 megajoules per liter, which is five times greater than that of liquid hydrogen.

Potential for Impact
At scale, the ability to turn waste into clean hydrogen-generating fuels will 1) offset significant carbon emissions from difficult-to-decarbonize sectors (processing just 5 percent of the world’s scrap aluminum supply today would offset over 500 megatons of carbon dioxide per year) and 2) reframe many commodities, like aluminum, as long-duration clean energy storage, simultaneously reducing pollution and further catalyzing the use of fossil-free and renewable energy sources. Additionally, as the climate warms and natural disasters become more frequent, converting aluminum debris into fuels for distributed power generation will fortify local resilience to climate change.