Hydrogen generation through Aluminum-Water Reactions
Aluminum has proven to be an energy-dense, safe, and overall practical means of generating hydrogen gas on demand via its reaction with water. As a form of energy storage, aluminum is particularly attractive when high volumetric energy density is desirable and water is readily available as an oxidizer, such as for transport applications. In comparison, aluminum is twice as energy dense per unit volume as diesel, and roughly 40 times as lithium-ion. Moreover, aluminum is a highly abundant (i.e. the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and most abundant metal) and relatively affordable material (2.59 USD/kg in February 2023), especially when considering cost savings associated with conventional means of hydrogen storage and transportation, making it an ideal candidate for a sustainable and transportable hydrogen-generating fuel.
To produce hydrogen, we use a process based on the exothermic reaction between aluminum and water (hydrolysis). Beforehand, aluminum is activated through a surface coating method with a liquid eutectic mixture of gallium and indium, allowing the water to react directly with the aluminum bulk, disrupting the aluminum oxide layer that normally forms on the bulk’s surface.
Currently, our work focuses on recovering the gallium-indium eutectic metal to improve the overall sustainability of the process. Reaction rates are also studied to optimize our process.
Maneuvering Patterns for Underwater Cooperative Navigation
For an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), there are many sources of disturbances and limitations to communication that lead to uncertainty in the estimated position of the vehicle while it is under the water’s surface. Acoustic communication can be used to transmit small data packets and to measure distances between vehicles outfitted with acoustic modems. Fusing this transmitted information with onboard sensor data can lead to an improved state estimation through computational methods. Megan’s research involves developing maneuvering strategies for multi-vehicles teams in order to further improve the estimated position and uncertainty during an underwater transit. This work can be applied to various scenarios involving human-autonomy teaming, heterogeneous vehicle search teams, and swarm robotics.
Hydrogen-powered engine & reactor