2260 Iron Powder - The Fuel Of The Future
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
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Since winter is about over, the iron powder based single use hand warmers will typically go on seasonal clearance for dirt cheap... great source if you want to experiment.
❤😅thanks🤩🤩🤩🤩
Then the used ones are probably FREE at a garbage can near you.
Probably even non-used ones...
@@TerrorTubbie666 It's a better tip than the other, amazing!! 👏👏😅
Something VERY odd my old boss in 2004 told me. He was a kid during the depression and said farmers used to use STRAIGHT MILK, not cream but straight milk in single cylinder diesels like lanz bulldog tractors. It didn't give you any power but did allow you to just drive it around the farm checking everything out or drive to the store. I've always wondered because wholesale, milk is cheaper than petrol or diesel here in Australia.
For the algorithm. 👍 More people need to be introduced to this channel.
Also of interesting note, iron oxides I think can be used as heat storage material. They can store 0.65 joules per gram per °C, which compared to sand's 0.84 joules per gram per °C seems lower, but you can pack 3.5 times more grams of iron oxide in the same volume compared to sand, so a iron oxide heat storage device would in theory be 2.7 times better at storing heat than a sand one.
In a world where we burn pure iron to produce heat, the exhaust itself could be used to store it.
Ironic...?
My father worked in an auto shop when I was young. He would bring home iron powder from turning brake rotors on the lathe. We would throw it on camp fires to produce the same exact effect.
a lot of commenters seem to be confused. its a reusable energy storage medium, not something you just burn and throw away. the only catch is how efficient is it to convert the rust back to pure iron.
LOL..there is just one catch. As I recall we have the same problem with oxidized Hydrogen (water).
@@luisderivas6005 yup but powdered iron might be easier to store. it might be heavier too so someone's going to have to do the math to see what its good for.
@@TuttleScott Yeah, water is pretty easy to store as well. It's a dumb idea.
So a furnace to make electricity to make hydrogen to run a car to go buy more rust
It is not that hard, the problem is you need to add carbon. FeO + C + energy = Fe + CO2, the CO2 part is not a great idea
This is another example that there is indeed found in our natural world, continuous and perpetual useful energy sources, if we only build the mechanisms to exploit them!
Small detail: it's not a primary fuel, its a battery.
You need the same amount of energy, plus the inefficiencies, to return the iron oxide to iron
So does a battery but it degrades with every charge/discharge cycle.
So it looks like powdered iron is kind of a good fuel, or battery if you want to call it that.
And one can "recharge" the iron at places that have abundant energy like for example where heat from within the earth comes close to the surface, or solar, wind etc. and spend it when wind is low, its dark etc.
It would be interesting to calculate the round trip efficiency of the system
Plus all iron is found as iron oxide, the cycle starts requiring excess energy to obtain the elemental iron before it could be used as a fuel. Identical to hydrogen.
I thought they'd be a catch. A bit like clean green electric RUN from a coal power station. And iron powder. Smelted using coal. The thing is, you can't focus on one side of the equation, pretend it's clean green magic while ignoring the REST of the process.
We have been pretending oil is a energy source for more than a century and it is harder to convince co2 to become plancton to return to oil
Iron also being one of the principle ingredients in thermite so right there is another application in pyrotechnics. Interesting it's not in an airyated form.
Perhaps you could help explain how irons application in thermite works? Awesome video thanks Rob =)
Hey Rob, thanks for highlighting metal combustion as a renewable fuel cycle. I've been personally chasing down the potential for magnesium combustion, given its light weight, high energy density (24.75 MJ/kg) and the ability to burn controllably it in non-powdered formats. There's also solid research on how to use Solid Oxide Membrane Electrolysis to refine magnesium oxide into metalic magnesium. Love seeing more explorations of iron combustion too!
The problem is care and feeding of the steel sheep. :)
Please make a video on how rusty iron is recycled.
It has to be reduced back to the free metal iron state and it can easily done by heating with carbon. The carbon is oxidized to carbon dioxide during the process. This is basically the way people have been making iron metal since 1200 BC, the start of the iron age. Iron ore is basically iron oxide.
There’s a brewery that uses burning iron for heating, and if I remember correctly, all that’s needed to reverse the reaction is to pass electricity through it. It’s not a particularly efficient process, but definitely sustainable assuming renewable electricity.
Phenomenal amount of CO2 is produced in smelting iron. Not that thats a problem, as CO2 is the gas of life, but if you want to be honest, all you're doing is shifting where the CO2 is produced. Plus you loose a lot of efficiency by using carbon to make a fuel. Better to burn the carbon where the energy is needed
@@stephenjones3737 using iron for heating shouldn’t involve much CO2 at all - making steel does, through two steps in the process, but iron should be able to be directly smelted. Once you have iron dust, “burning” it means bonding it to oxygen, and undoing that just needs electricity passed through the rust.
@@Axman6 But if you get your electricity from a power plant that burns a carbon fuel you still produce lot of CO2. Not too many large power plants are solar, nuclear may be a better choice.
Really good video : sounds like stories i read as a boy ,from the imagination of Robert Heinlein and his propulsion method of iron powered spaceships.
And at $6925.95 for 25 kg. it is completely affordable! It took me less than 2 minutes to find that all important fact.
I want to hear more of this. I want iron powered cars, lanterns, solar iron powder "chargers", iron powder heating, iron powder portable generators. I don't know what it would look like, a 2 -stroke engine, upside down with a hopper with an archimedes screw at the bottom for the exhaust and a hole in the middle of the side for iron powder and air intake? I don't know. But I want it to be the next big thing, it is already considerably cheaper than hydrogen, in terms of storage, and far simpler than batteries.
Fascinating stuff (Although I have been wary of what the date is! ;) )
I would like to add that any kind of powder is combustible when agitated and put near a flame or heat source. This was proven many years ago when, in my birth town of Banbury, an explosion happened at a large food factory in the centre of town. I believe it was caused by custard powder!
> any kind of powder is combustible
Sand
Snow
@@donaldhobson8873😂😂😂
Fascinating. Thank you. I'be been following the 'Rust Battery', but never heard of using direct Iron combustion for heat.
I suppose the elephant in the room is the conversion energy/polution cost to reclaim the iron. Efficiency of that step? Its still a very good prospect for an energy storage mechanism.
I have some questions.
A) It seems there are only two options as to why this works. Either the reaction of iron with oxygen is exothermic, or the stripping away of oxygen from dihydrogen oxide (water vapor) in the air is exothermic. If it is exothermic, is it burning the hydrogen in the process and thus the fire we see? This is what I am guessing. We are converting hydrogen to energy with a little heat and iron as catalysts.
B) As the reversal process of iron oxide back to iron means the stripping away of oxygen molecules, we seem to not lose any oxygen or iron in the process. However, if this is process is the burning of hydrogen from water vapor, we are basically converting water to hydrogen and burning it without using the oxygen.
C) If the above are true, it would seem that iron is not the fuel, hydrogen is the fuel and iron is just a catalyst with rust being the precipitate (stored iron and oxygen). In this sense, iron is similar (but very different) to a battery and water is the fuel.
Is any of what I said true?
i wonder about using acids to break the metal to powder but it changes the metal sometimes , maybe rust flakes could get de oxided ...
Super! Thank you very much!
Would be good on Mars. Plenty of Iron dust up there
Good point and there only ticket to come back home.
Plenty of carbon dioxide & water to make methane out of as well. Ever wondered why StarShip uses methane as rocket fuel?
Not a lot of oxygen to react with though.
@@Rhannmah Guess what's in carbon dioxide & water!
@@j.f.christ8421 Guess how much energy you need to get the oxygen free so it can react with the iron!
All so very True. Thanks. - T
At first I thought this was a April fools prank.
I'm pretty sure it is.
Pretty out there huh? But it's been kicking around a while.
It's real, although it seems that there are technical challenges that need to be addressed before a working product can be brought to market.
@@ianmalone2022 It'll never make it "to market". There's a million party tricks like this, interesting but impractical. The only thing that comes close is the zinc-air battery commonly used in hearing aid batteries. (But no-one is sending the old batteries back for a "recharge")
Nothing wrong with finding different ways to convert rust to iron though, that's useful,
Thankfully chemistry pays off. Iron oxide electrolysis easy heat fuel. Thx 4 info. Cheer's
Och Robert, it was an auld trick on apprentices, setting fire to steel wool.
Clean burnin iron and iron accessories. Man, I tell ya what.
aluminum is one of the most abundant elements too but it requires elecrtic to extract it i think
Stunning, thanks.
What about steel wool might be a little more expensive but easier to handle ,could use a fan to increase air flow.
"why is there powder?"
"it's a chronic buildup of my favorite iron dust"
"that seems like an OHSA violation"
"this is my house, dude"
Hello Robert, just wondering if you could do a review on Bob greenyer 's latest assessment on plasmoids and ancient maths.
It's been a while and the time is right I'm sharing the best design . From as you put it a gentleman scientist .Please take a look. Why I share it now last years 178 degree was recorded breaking. No friction or other fuel propellent will work. Thank you for your inspiration 10 years ago with graphene. lol best wishes always Sid thanks Robert
Exciting. I remember seeing algae being extracted from water and turned into an ignitable powder on Tomorrow's World.
The BBC should bring Tomorrows World back; old 1960s format, old 1960s theme tune, and it should be presented by Robert.
Pondscum is the fastest growing plant. Extremely nutritious as a food source and shows huge potential as a fuel source.
There is a lot of oil in algae some varieties as much as 30% by weight.
@@Tiptonian Good idea for a programme but not a fan of the BBC these days, robs defo got his own tv series written all over him.
@@Barskor1 Interesting . I remember they were putting the water in a coiled glass tube to maximise surface area for the sun to hit it and increase growth.
How do we recycle it and how do we need to store it?
My guess is that it needs to be stored under dry or similar conditions, so it doesn't prematurely turn into iron oxide?
I believe Wallace engineering are working on this idea and Gromit industries are in line for a licence to produce the generating equipment.
Mookery lol
@@Barskor1 Deservedly so.
Thank you 🖖
It's criminal that it isn't been used already
Not read any comments yet but what jumps to mind is conservation of energy If you take out the energy you can't still have that energy ? Unless i'm missing something.
I am not sure he meant that it is perpetual recycling, but that there is little to no waste product, mitigating the amount of mining that needs to be done to replenish fuel supply
You might be missing the date.
@@daffyduck780 you might be missing the ability to google. the original paper exploring the idea came out mcgill university, in 2015.
@@daffyduck780Well spotted, I feel an idiot, thank you lol
@@willdeit6057 Don't worry. I was fooled for a while.
The rust pretty much has to be thrown into a furnace and reground back into a powder.
The efficiency would be terrible even as a form of energy storage.
Half the process described here and yes could be readily implemented. Just wondering about a home grown means of regenerating the iron powder from the oxide.
IRC posters mentioned electrolysis for unrusting the iron.
To help out all of you who like myself want to know how the powder is made, well I looked, here's the tldr, when the iron is molten it is poured over a stream of high pressure water, the pressure mentioned somewhere was 100 bar (10MPa) and that this should make particles in the -50-100 um range
it sounds like a great idea, you can burn and recycle a future cartridge and get new cartridges, the energy to replenish centrally can come from whatever is availible.
thinking about the bacteria that leave/make/are iron.
if you dried them wouldn't that tiny amount of iron especially be the finest powder you could ever want?
It creates rust. You still need to charge it.
If this machine ever becomes feasible, it will be a huge plant and not something for your home.
Plus it’s non-toxic if you spill it in your coffee!
Robert, absolutely fantastic, what is the process to reclaim the iron oxide back to iron powder?
electrolysis or smelting mate
...and as usual the energy to do this is free.
@@j.f.christ8421no it just seems that negative energy is free, since you pass it out so easily
Thanks. Your previous Iron oxide Video you found Iron Oxide for 20 cents a kilo . The numbers for cost benefit I suggest are back of envelope numbers so there in the future could be better benefits for Iron Oxide fuels . Looking your chart the iron Oxide has per kilo about 20% the energy per kilo than oil based petrol fuels and Diesel fuel are about 12% to 20% more energy per kilo than petrol fuels . The basics are oil based fuels before tax and leaving the refineries as manufactured fuel are about 30 cents per kilo and closer to £2 per kilo at the forecourts if taxxed as fuel or probably about £1.20 per kilo for red diesel untaxed fuel with nearly 15% extra heat per kilo than petrol fuels .This suggests that Iron Oxide fuels will cost 20% to 50% more per kilo of fuel to burn than oil based fuels per kilowatt of heat released in todays money . There is good safety for Iron fuels in transport and burning and vitally no risks for deadly CO emissions i that gas and oil or wood fuel based can create . .However most Iron comes from energy that is coal or gas or oil based energy systems. That suggests every recycle of burnt Iron is merely going to still produce CO2 emissions > now if your like me that don't think CO2 emissions are interesting problem then there is just the problem of the cost per kilo per kilowatt to justify this solution for for the masses of the peoples .For me to burn this fuel in my apartment with no chimney system allowed it is possibly a great fuel as I have only got expensive Electric power at typically £0.35cents per kilowatt and night rates of about £0.20cents here in Ireland . Building regulations means there is no chimney allowed so as to burn other fuels .I can look to burn Iron Oxide if the price per kilowatt is cheaper and not have risk for CO or CO2 gas problems . So yes keep the information coming to repel these save the planet religious GRETA nut job CO2 fanatics away with their our goose is cooked from CO2 emissions .
Does it produce net positive energy after powering the cyclone recycling apparatus?
But what does it take to make it into powder?
wouldn't work in piston engines or turbines, unless you could cyclically steam away the rust residue from moving clearance parts. Maybe some sort of ion fueled furnace recuperating its heat to the induction system of a Stirling engine that flashes injected water to steam after compression. Both fuels would be green, and you wouldn't have to cool the engine as it is done by steam.
have you heard about the time ppl sprinkled rust into the ocean and it seemed to stimulate food chains
Iron is an important mineral for algae blooms. Dust storms originating from the Sahara naturally deposite iron powder in the ocean, which supports marine life.
Interesting but doesn’t recycling rust make co2?
no - not really - but i guess that depends on how you do it
This needs to be rolled out now for industrial as well as domestic heating. Adapting gas burners to hybrid gas/iron burners should expedite rollout & reduce gas consumption. What are the downsides with this?
Your kitchen fills up with rust.
@@j.f.christ8421 your burners are inside? Yeah, keep them inside.
@@daveh6356 Does your kitchen not have a roof?
@@j.f.christ8421 no, it has a ceiling, the house has a roof.
@@daveh6356 Ah pedantry, quite impressive for someone who thinks iron filing are great for cooking with. Ok, does your kitchen not have a ceiling than?
So if they ship a bunch of iron dust to the moon, is the oxide also a reasonable non-cryogenic way to store bulk oxygen? Perform your solar processing, and you get your oxygen right back out, right?
Cool
I felt like in the twilight zone for a minute or two ... ;)
Watching this and checking my calendar! ;)
The problem is replacing the energy you take out, but iron batteries for renewables is an interesting idea.
I wonder if it would be possible to obtain electricity from the rusting process (similarly to an hydrogen/platinum fuel cell) instead of having to convert the heat into mechanical motion and then into electrical generation.
2:32 Graph is really miss leading comparing gases, liquids, and solids. Perhaps compare it by molecule.
What would it take to turn rust powder back into iron powder?
It'd be neat to see more detail about the electrolytic reduction of the rust back to iron. For solid objects it's a simple process, but I'd have to think about how to do it to powder. I suppose you could put it in a metal can and use the can itself as the cathode conductor. I wonder if you'd actually get a powder back out though, or if it fuses together. I realized iron burns ever since I saw you spinning molten steel wool around on a string while cackling like a madman. :) Didn't think until now about using it in a closed loop though. Cool concept, this "rechargeable fuel" or whatever you want to call it
Maybe it can be "repowdered" mechanically? (With metal balls inside a tumbler, something that is being researched nowadays)
@@drillerdev4624Could also be recovered chemically, like how 99.99% Gold is in the form of dust after purification.
I guess the real bottleneck is turning the rust back into iron powder using green energy sources cheaply enough. If it can be done, iron powder can essentially act like a battery on a large scale. Of course, reclaiming the iron from the rust will likely be more energy intensive, but if the energy to do that is coming from excess solar, that's perfectly alright. We weren't able to use it otherwise anyways.
You have the same problem releasing oxygen from 'rusty' hydrogen (water). The molecular bonds are too strong and require too much energy to break. You also have a much bigger problem with Iron: to efficiently associate iron with oxygen requires it be in very thin strands or power form, which makes it extremely volatile near sparks or any ignition source.
Simply displace the iron with carbon leaving co2 and iron. Great for plants and engineering
@@luisderivas6005I would have to disagree on almost every point being made here. Firstly, if you electrolyze water back to hydrogen and oxygen, the bond strength is 100% irrelevant for the technical applications for energy storage as you‘d get the same energy back from combustion as you‘d have to use for generating it. The real problem with water is kinetic effects during electrolysis leading to an overpotential on the electrodes and that in turn leading to a poor „round trip efficiency“ so to speak. And of course we have the problem of storing hydrogen.
Now with iron powder transporting/handling it would honestly not be a big problem I‘d argue as the small particles don’t allow for enough air in between for the whole thing to combust. If anything, the aerosolized powder could easily combust, but even that would make it inherently safer than gasoline.
@@liesofgasandpilesofshoesSo what‘s the advantage here? That would just lead us back to an even worse way for generating heat/electricity from coal, leading us back to fossil ressources.
Also from what I can remember the terminal reducing agent is CO, not carbon from this process.
The only viable option to reducing iron I can imagine here, is using hydrogen.
Not exactly weight efficient if you hope to use it in portable applications, but i like the idea, specially considering the waste management and abundance points.
it's really just like an iron air battery mate and why would you use it as a portable thing - it's a furnace!
@@ThinkingandTinkering I realized that after a quick rewatch, was thinking about "fuel" in terms of car/plane fuel. But hey! You could still try to actuate an internal combustion engine like those gunpowder engines of old.
How much energy does the recycling cost?
Not going to be running any cars on this stuff. But, for localized use, could be nice.
So I have one question..... How much energy does it take to turn it back into iron powder?
How much energy is used to mine, refine, transport and then grind it up into powder? Presumably it'll have to be delivered to every single house as well. Can't see this taking off for domestic use.
The point is that is worth investigating vs waste from the greenest green energy right now which is solar when account for all the costs, lifespan, refining, battery mining. The limitation will be the cost of recycle. Also iron is freely available domestically vs solar
I see it as a long term energy storage, even if is not very efficient
The regeneration cycle can be performed during excessive green solar and wind surplus.
We need internal combustion engines that run on custard powder.
What about the energy cost of grinding and drying?
The obvious question is: why not aluminum? It is even more energy dense than iron. If it is too explosive we can do 2 stage burning, iron in air, aluminum in iron oxide.
Maybe because it's harder to turn aluminum oxide back into aluminum without gallium or mechanical scratching or milling? Then recovery and pumping the powder without using air to transport it so its reacting as is pumped, since not ferromagnetic?
@@kingofnothing2260 it is harder but it gives better results. Aluminum is lighter so we have to use less trucks and fuel to transport it back and forward, The end customer would have to carry less mass from the store and to the recycling plant.
It is more about ratios not absolute values.
@@szogun1987 I can agree with that, I'm just thinking in long term quick recyclablity of present powder, considering a truck load of infinitely reusable fuel would be needed once, so transport would be less consequential than the quick recovery time and energy cost of iron vs higher output but higher energy cost of aluminum probably offset how light it is due to magnetic transport/ recovery and ease of recyclability or iron. They both need 2 atoms of each element and gain 3 oxygen atoms, so output vs weight vs energy cost vs cost of powder is probably better for iron.
And if you use iron powder and aluminum powder and oxidize them, the exothermic reaction creates thermite which would then catch fire and burn through any vessel but pure carbon increasing cost of design and maintenance.
@@kingofnothing2260 my point was to trigger the discussion and your arguments are great 😃
But how much energy does it take to make that dust.
It's not an energy creation scheme, it's an energy storage and transport one. You'd use solar, nuclear, wind, etc. to make and recycle the stuff.
Just park your old car out into the garden and wait.
it's just like a battery mate - an iron air battery
I've seen iron algae swamp a clear patch of water 3mx2m in a matter of days when the Sun's out. It's pure iron algae bloom. Can be used for smelting. By the way, iron isn't the fuel!
We didn't learn anything about the amount of energy needed for recycling.
technically the same amount of energy that's released in the combustion. in a perfect world with 0 loss.
At least the same amount as what you got while burning the iron plus losses.
It's ironic (here we go) that fusion's eventual waste product is Iron, as no more energy can be extracted from squeezing iron... both heavier and lighter atoms can be fused to release energy. And yet we give iron the credit here for being oxidized, yet it's oxygen which is doing all the work... well, oxygen and hydrogen. Which brings us to why iron is celebrated here, for the relatively easy electrolysis which can pluck the oxygen atoms off the iron oxide and stick them back on a hydrogen. Easy reversal, meaning it's suitable as an excess energy sink from renewables, so when the wind and sun stop, we can burn iron and release some energy, possibly similar to efficiency as some of those amonia ir aluminum sulfate batteries or whatever that municipal scale emergent battery tech was.
WOW! We get a second iron age lol when combined with rust acid batteries
Thanks for another banger 🤙
Anything Is Possible Earthling
Bless Up ❤
Very fine iron powder will self combust in contact with air. The problem is not to burn the iron powder, the problem is to reduce the rust back to iron, the so called " green iron" process
The alge powdered truck on Tomorrow's World comes to mind.
OK my chemistry is very rusty ive forgotten most of it BUT if you try to burn rust what is the oxygen in the air going to combine with, its already iron oxide, or am i missing the part about rust decomposing?
They are burning iron (Fe) to rust (Fe2O3). The problem is converting the rust back to iron, but many are working on that - once we have cheap green iron, this will take over as a major energy source.
It isn't the burning of rust, it's the burning of iron powder, which has rust as its ash product.
@@idjles Ha ha ha lol no.
wont we run out of iron if its used as a fuel?
exactly!
i guess i had nowhere else to post this so here goes. Ive been watching a whole lot of videos regarding grounding of the body and its benefits tying in to the earths natural electromagnetic energies and it got me thinking a little broader. WHAT IF, we could also expose all the zeropoint energy and perpetual motion systems with similar influence from the earth itself to help or aid these devices to output more energy that what we put in? Has anyone come across or delved into such research?
Iron isn't a source but a fuel. Like a battery it needs charging.
why does regular iron burn better than rust, that contains all the oxygen?
..i could watch your vids all day i better run , thanks
It would be great if a hot air furnace that burns propane to burn iron powder. Propane is expensive.
what's the difference between circular recyclable and perpetual motion?
Well, technically circular recyclable exists. Once we extract energy from the perpetual motion machines it'll be really cheap to do.
How to keep warm and heat your sand battery
Huh... I'm sitting on a formation consisting of over 11,900 acres of iron.
Right under my own land, my best estimate, I have about 30,000 tons of iron.
But its all already an oxide.
For a moment, I was wondering if this was going to be a reference to Doc E.E.Smith's Triplanetary where an alien race has figured out how to use Iron as an energy source.
(excerpt from summary on Wikipedia)
"The Nevians are the dominant, amphibious race of the planet Nevia, located many light years distant from the Sun. Their planet is in a galactic region that has very little iron, which they use as an energy source, so they set out with a spaceship to try to obtain more."
There are some brilliantly horrific scenes describing *how* they get more Iron!
Hi Rob very interesting
I've sent you an email not related to any recent videos so not to confuse this thread.
What does iron dust and rust do to your lungs?
as I have said that iron oxide can be regenerated back to iron with a simple half watt UV laser diode too, you can see it in a video on my channel with this smoke looking substance that is the oxygen released and unable to rebond to the iron before it solidifies as iron metal on even plastic surfaces. just need to figure out how to get it to form in a way that makes it easy to combust again LOL
It sounds like a fantastic fuel maybe it will become useful in 100 years or so, the only thing that we've used the fuel for hundreds of year is fossil fuel lithium iron batteries have been around for over 30 years and now were are using them in EVs and they don't work very well there so good luck.
Hoovering up fine iron powder is not recommended. Sparks caused by static electricity could easily ignite an explosion.
What is the company name that is developing this? Is it publicly tradable?
The issue is all natural iron is found as iron oxide, you need massive amounts of energy input (a slag furnace) to get the iron in the first place to make it useful as a fuel. The only chance of finding pure iron is from a fresh meteor.
Iron is abundant in space but the oxygen is in short supply unless you find an ice comet. Multi fuel engines comes to mind.
It might be more convenient to think of this as a kind of battery.
Once again my mind is "blown" over the concept of using this as a fuel in space (or the moon anyway). Awesome!
Don’t think so. My phantom vacuum,as it seems to me,was the original cyclone vacuum
Thermite powder?
Yeah add in some magnesium 🎉
Robert….this material, as a fuel, does have some interesting properties. However, it’s a bit like hydrogen. To use it as a fuel, you need an inexhaustible source of elemental iron, which simply does not exist in nature. It has to be created from iron oxide using huge energy inputs. Has anyone done an energy balance on this idea? To me, it looks as crazy as our current fleet of industrial wind turbines….more energy used to create the solution than is realized through implementation of the “solution”.
Asteroids
Unless I'm mistaken, iron burnt in the presence of steam absorbs oxygen from the water vapor leaving hydrogen behind. If this hydrogen is then reintroduced to the oxide under high temp, water vapor results and the oxide is restored to iron to burn again. These effects are demonstrated on various youtube videos.
@@Bobby-u7f again, we come back to the energy balance.
This would act as an energy carrier, sharing a niche with ammonia, methanol, hydrogen, etc.. Iron also happens to already be abundant, non-toxic (lookin at you, ammonia), and has a closed cycle involving no CO2. You're right that the iron oxide --> iron reaction requires a lot of energy, but we assume that it is done with excess renewables when they're not needed. A nuclear powered society could also make great use of an iron energy carrier. Lots of cool options.