I am going to include here some of my replies to Harold Saive, so that you can see that he has been informed of he facts:
On 8/11/2011 8:31 PM, Jay Reynolds wrote:
Mr. Saive,
I looked over your posting about a suspicion that Trimethyl Aluminum could be used as a fuel additive.
Considering the pyrophoric nature of trimethyl aluminum, this precludes it's use in ordinary aircraft fuel stored in wing tanks.
The reason why I say this is that this material is for all practical purposes an explosive.
See the MSDS here at Rosalind Peterson's website:
http://agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/6T_2001_Trimethylaluminum_2001.pdf
Reading the MSDS, you see that it's flash point is -1 degree fahrenheit, plus it is incompatible with air, water, oxygen, bases and acids.
Water is always present in fuels to some degree ,and this material explodes on contact with water.
It flashes into flame immediately on contact with air.
This does not sound like a material one would put on an ordinary jetliner.
I understand that some research was done which used a 14% mixture of TMA with JP-4 fuel.
Here it is:
http://www.archive.org/stream/nasa_techdoc_19650014455/19650014455_djvu.txt
The mixture was considered unstable enough that it had to be kept under inert gas and was not sent through the engine. It was sent only to an afterburner in an attempt to find a way to allow a jet engine to fly above it's normal ceiling of ~90,000 ft. Using a fuel containing metals is a big no-no, as you saw after the recent volcanic erptions. Metals in the combustion path of a gas turbine engine would either plate out on the hot gas parts or erode them. ffectively, this will destroy the engine you need to keep you aloft.
This experiment was done on the ground. Consider that only 14% of the fuel could be TMA, and the actual aluminum contained in that amount of TMA is only about 50% of that 14%, or 7%. So, the portion of actual aluminum in such a fuel is very small. Because the rest of Trimethyl aluminum is the methyl part, an aircraft such as a 747 which carries say 150 tons of fuel would only be able to carry 7% of that total in aluminum, .07 x 150= 10 tons.
If you could
a) load the planes with this unstable fuel likely to explode
b) keep the egines from failing due to running metals through the gas path
Then you would only be able to deliver 10 tons/flight. To get the 20 million tons, this means 2 million flights would have to take place. American airlines flies less than a million/year, so you would be looking at an operation about twice as large.
Trimethyl aluminum as a fuel additive?
I think not.
Mr. Saive,
I'm not sure you understand the fundamentals of aluminum and aluminum oxide. Pardon me if this seems a little lengthy, but it is imperative that you understand the fundamentals to get the finer points.
First, I can speak to aluminum's abundance in our world.
1. Aluminum is the third most abundant element in our earth's crust.
2. Additionally, aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth's crust. It makes up about 7% of the mass (essentially the weight) of the earths crust. If you apply this number to an average acre of soil, that 7% would equal about 140,000 pounds of aluminum per acre or 70,000 ppm. Much of the aluminum in ordinary soil is found in clays or as aluminum oxide.
3 This may come as a surprise to you, but here are the average relative abundances of aluminum around us:
(units are parts per million which is the same as ug/liter)
in earth's crust- seventy thousand (70,000) parts per million
in the human body- 0.9 parts per million
in sea water- 0.005 parts per million
One interesting fact you can see above is that seawater contains so little aluminum compared to the body and especially compared to the soil. This is because, while sea water does contain many minerals such as salt, etc. which have been leached out of the soil and concentrated by evaporation, very little aluminum is able to leach out of soils, despite it being the third most common soil element!
Aluminum is not a very available element in nature because in its pure metallic or free form it rapidly reacts to form stable compounds with whatever it can. This is why we do not find nuggets of aluminum even though it makes up 7% of earth's crust.
Aluminum is so reactive that when aluminum metal is exposed to air, it quickly reacts with oxygen to form an aluminum oxide 'skin' about 10 nanometers thick.
Aluminum in nature also reacts readily with other elements. Remember that aluminum is the 3rd most abundant element in earth's crust? Well, the 1st and 2nd elements in crustal abundance are oxygen and silicon. I already discussed how aluminum reacts with oxygen.
In addition to the simple oxide of aluminum, a class of minerals called feldspars combine aluminum with silicon, oxygen and either potassium, sodium, or calcium. Feldspars formed in the magmas which created earth's crust, and make up about 60% of the crust itself. When you look at granite, the shiny bits are mica and quartz, most of the rest is feldspar containing aluminum. Most clays are made up of aluminum and silicon derived from several minerals.
The reason why I have mentioned all of this is because you need to fully understand the role of aluminum on earth you must understand what it really is. According to some, aluminum is toxic to life and very reactive. To some extent this is true, but the fact is that since aluminum is so reactive, it is almost always already bound tightly in an inert form.
All the different natural combinations of aluminum I mentioned before, aluminum oxide, feldspars, granites, clays, and many more are bound so tightly that once bound, only extreme heat or acids can generally set it free again to be harmful.
This is not a radical idea. This is real science. Dr. Lenny Thyme, the PhD Chemist who appears in the movie, "What In The World Are They Spraying" was asked about this on an open forum, and here is what he said:
"Speaking chemistry - barium and strontium are both alkali earth metals - similar to calcium and magnesium. They are larger than the normal divalent biological metals, but should not be toxic by themselves. Barium is used as an image contrast agent, Aluminum on the other hand is a major threat, at both low and high pH. I do not think that the spraying drives the pH in either water or land - just not enough mass present.
The problem with aluminum is two fold. First, it is a 3+ cation and so when it substitutes into bio-systems it replaces a calcium and another atom of sodium or potassium, in order to balance charge. This leaves a hole, which gets space filled by changing protein folding. This creates prion diseases, like mad cow and CJD. It is also strongly implicated in Alzheimer's disease. The second problem is that at physiological pH, aluminum is deposited as a precipitate Al2O3. This chemical is very inert."
What he is saying is that aluminum oxide (Al2O3):
a) is not going to change pH of soil
b) is inert, because it has already been bound in is oxide form
What he fears is that if the unbound free form of aluminum, the 3+ cation gets int the body, it will stay there. This fear that aluminum causes prion diseases/Alzheimer's, however, is not generally recognized as fact and hasn't yet been proven.
So, in summary, every time you see dust from clay, every time you walk on the soil, every time
you drink tea and many other natural products, remember they all contain aluminum. Isn't it fascinating that a potentially harmful element exists as the 3rd most common on earth, yet life has existed and prospered with that threat for eons? How could this be so?
Nature, or God, if you Believe, has marvelously provided all it's bounty despite aluminum being so prevalent, so ubiquitous, so inescapable, yet also so bound and locked away that life can go on regardless.
Now to your original question.
"What is the most feasible way to vaporize aluminum into aluminum oxide?"
There is actually no reason to go backwards from aluminum to aluminum oxide. The chief ore of aluminum is bauxite. This is found most abundantly in tropical soils in our hemisphere in Jamaica, Suriname, and even Hawaii. Most of the worlds bauxite comes from Australia and China.
The raw bauxite ore is first processed into alumina before being smelted into aluminum metal. Thus, to produce aluminum one must first produce a pure grade of alumina, also known as aluminum oxide. That is why I said that there is no need to oxidize aluminum to make aluminum oxide. You already have the aluminum oxide before you have the aluminum, see?
