Eco Factor: Magnesium stores 10 times more energy than hydrogen.
The abundance of hydrogen in the world makes automakers and energy suppliers think it to be the fuel of the future. However, there is no dearth of brains who believe that hydrogen should be replaced with magnesium for more energy storage. The positives of this replacement are many as magnesium can store up to 10 times more energy than hydrogen and there is enough magnesium in seawater to power the world for 300,000 years.
Looking at the positives, a Canadian company is working on a fuel cell that uses magnesium, air and water to produce electricity. Similarly an Israeli researcher has come up with a magnesium-based battery that can be used instead of the lithium-ion batteries that are common in most electronic devices we use today.
Like all other upcoming clean energy technologies this one too has some drawbacks. While the oceans might be loaded with magnesium, converting it to a form that can be used to store energy could require even more energy that what we’d get back from it. Spending energy on such a system is only practical if that energy comes in a cheap and renewable fashion. One researcher in Japan thinks that the answer is the use of solar energy to power a laser that the further purify magnesium. For now, hydrogen is definitely more practical than magnesium, but somewhere in the future it could be replaced with a more energy dense material found in seawater.
Via: Discovery News
