aluminium + sodium hydroxide + water = aluminium hydroxide???? help please

[gavinm]

Greetings:
Project sounds fascinating.


I wanted to ask you, when you said "the waste leftover will be sent to companies or factories where it can be converted back to aluminium", do you know of any firms that currently do this?




I have a LARGE amount of aluminium hydroxide (inert) that needs to be recycled/reused.


Please forward me any information you may have on this process, how how *energy intense* it may be?




Thanks in advance

[hoptoad]

snip...
basically i have built a rector that uses aluminium powder, sodium hydroxide and water to produce vast amounts of hydrogen.
snip...

Try this experiment. Fill a container to 3/4 full with water / NaOH, then insert an aluminium and copper rod into the solution about a 1 cm apart, with the top of the rods a few centimeters above the level of solution.  Then observe.

The aluminium will, on contact with the solution, begin to produce hydrogen. The copper rod will not.
There will be a potential difference between the copper and aluminium facilitated by the hydroxide solution.

Place a wire connector to the tops of the two rods to short their potential out. The copper rod will then produce oxygen, and the aluminium rod will produce even more hydrogen.

Be careful! Oxygen and Hydrogen re-combine very easily when extracted together into the same storage container.