Fundamentals of Metal Particle Combustion in Extreme Environments for Power Generation and Energetic Applications

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It is widely recognized that our society must transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources to mitigate climate change and enable a sustainable low-carbon society. What is needed is a technology to store large amounts of clean electricity, with the ability to transport this energy over large distances. Together with my colleagues and students at McGill, we have pioneered the novel concept of burning metal fuels with either air or water to power engines, steam turbines, or fuel cells, for power generation and to propel large vehicles. Metal fuels have a higher volumetric energy density than batteries or hydrogen, are safe to store and transport, and produce no carbon emissions during combustion. If the metal oxides produced are recycled back to the original metal with clean electricity, the complete sustainable energy cycle is carbon free. This provides an attractive opportunity for Canada, with our supply of clean energy and metal-processing industries, to reprocess oxides and export energy in the form of metal fuels in a future low-carbon economy. Developing a strong scientific foundation for the reaction of metal powders forms the motivation for the proposed research program. Our research has spurred worldwide interest in metal-fueled power generation systems. The key outstanding challenge to achieving this vision is the current lack of end-use devices that can efficiently convert the chemical energy within the metal powders directly into mechanical work and/or electricity. The present DG proposal will enable the design and testing of such energy conversion devices to extract the energy from the reaction of metal powders with air or water. We will also extend our previous fundamental work on metal combustion to more extreme pressure and temperature values to enhance the rate of combustion for high-power applications. The reaction of metal-water mixtures will be pushed into supercritical conditions where high rates of hydrogen production are expected. Using fine metal particles and a strong initiation source, we will determine minimum reaction times, extending our recent work that has shown that metal-water mixtures can react fast enough to be used as either a clean-burning propellant or explosive, producing pollution-free combustion products, which is attractive for deep mining applications, a significant contributor to the Canadian economy. My proposed research program provides a wealth of training opportunities for the development of HQP. The success of the research is dependent on the great students I have the pleasure to work with as well as the contributions of other members of my research team. The HQP will further their fundamental scientific knowledge as well as develop their engineering expertise to produce metal-fueled prototypes. The technical and communication skills they develop within our dynamic research group will allow them to thrive in any challenging work environment they enter after leaving McGill.