Production and characterization of aluminum alloys used for harvesting energy from the aluminum-water reaction

Abstract

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) are heavily used by the military and in the industry for countless underwater tasks but currently have a limited mission time due to limitations in the energy density of their battery packs. Aluminum is an ideal energy source for AUVs because it exothermically reacts with water, producing hydrogen as one of its by-product, and it is two orders of magnitude more energy dense than lithium ion batteries. A method of using an aluminum-galinstan alloy was conceived to react with water where the presence of galinstan allows elemental aluminum to overcome the passivating aluminum oxide layer. The aluminum atoms reacts with water to produce heat and hydrogen at the grain boundaries with galinstan. This thesis attempts to develop a method of producing an aluminum-galinstan alloy. Several methods are explored to determine the most reliable method. Experiments were conducted to determine the percentage hydrogen yield to characterize the alloy.