In June 2006, I had talked about how Hydrogen Power Inc. (HPI) was developing its AlumiFuel technology that uses aluminum plus an environmentally-friendly catalyst and water to generate high grade hydrogen gas. Since this time, HPI has upgraded their AlumiFuel hydrogen on demand technology offering a 60-percent increase in hydrogen production.
This same technology also reduces costs associated with this production by 45-percent. The AlumiFuel technology will compete head-on with lithium-ion battery technology offering 4 to 5 times longer runtime for portable and stationary applications.
In June last year, HPI had also used its AlumiFuel process for phase one of its H2Go program, powering a Ford Ranger XL truck with its on demand technology. The new breakthrough in AlumiFuel technology will most likely also be ported over to phase two of the H2Go program.
If successful, the H2Go program will mean that an entirely unique hydrogen infrastructure may be built that will differ from the current oil infrastructure. Consumers would need to buy the AlumiFuel chemical (and supply their own water) and this distribution chain would not necessarily involve the oil companies at all.