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Sounds like a scam. Alane is not a friendly chemical, it's pyrophoric and incompatible with water. It can be produced by hydrogenation of aluminum at 10GPa an

by 08-15 8y ago

Sounds like a scam. Alane is not a friendly chemical, it's pyrophoric and incompatible with water. It can be produced by hydrogenation of aluminum at 10GPa and 600C, rather hellish conditions, or by electrolysis of sodium-aluminum-hydride using a mercury cathode, two more easily handled chemicals. They do not quote any details, no numbers, and we are supposed to believe they made this process safe and cheap?

Tloewald 8y ago
Energy storage technologies are all about nasty chemistry. Nasty chemistry is where the energy is. Commercializing the chemistry isn’t easy or everyone would do it.
- rexreed 8y ago
  So what are their substantiated claims for being able to commercialize this successfully and in a safe manner? The website graphics are nice tho.
- amelius 8y ago
  What is nasty about the way the human body stores its energy?
  - mierenga 8y ago
    Have you ever smelled one of those things?
  - Tloewald 8y ago
    A healthy human diet is 8700 kJ/ day. A gallon of gasoline has 120,000 kJ. So, we are very energy efficient. But no so awesome in terms of energy storage density.
olliej 8y ago
But they say they’re developing a patented next generation process to create it efficiently and cheaply so it must be true. Based on my expert knowledge (As acquired from Wikipedia just now) I agree, it sounds at least as bad as lithium (in terms of exposure to almost anything) and I’m not sure it is more than just a high density hydrogen carrier. It isn’t a “rechargeable” carrier either - so it’s closer to a regular single use battery, with the combustible potential of lithium. I’m assuming you’re a chemist, so you can tell me how far off the mark I am :)