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MIT Researchers Make Hydrogen Fuel From Aluminum and Water interestingengineering.com

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Hydrogen has the potential to replace fossil fuels in jet engines, for the generation of electricity, and even for long-term storage of energy.

There are two major reasons why this reaction is not commonly used today; one is that aluminum reacts more readily with the oxygen in the air and forms aluminum oxide. The compound prevents aluminum from reacting with water. Therefore, for the reaction to occur, one simply needs to remove the top layer of aluminum oxide and drop the aluminum in water, while ensuring that the aluminum oxide is not formed again.

To address the challenge of preventing the formation of aluminum oxide, the team used information from some previous experiments and painted the scrap aluminum with a eutectic mixture of gallium and indium which remains in liquid state at room temperature while being able to penetrate through the aluminum oxide

"Using aluminum as our source, we can ‘store’ hydrogen at a density that’s 10 times greater than if we just store it as a compressed gas," said Professor Douglas Hart.