development]—it is not our job [to], nor has Congress told us we should, be in the business of competing with industry for commercial markets,” said Joshua Houck, a representative from ARL’s Technology Transfer and Outreach Office. “What we’ve found is the best way, one of the least expensive ways, the Army can procure a capability, is by developing a technology that hope- fully has what we call dual use.” A dual-use technology, one that has both military and commercial applications, enables ARL to license the technology to industry for mass production and then buy it back at a less expensive rate from a competitive market. When the government licenses its intellectual property—such as the nanogalvanic powder—to industry for production, the over- all unit cost of the item drops considerably, and the Army is able to buy it back at a much lower cost than if it had kept the tech- nology and made it at one manufacturer, he said.
“Also, here at the lab, doing basic and fundamental research, the technologies we generate aren’t necessarily commercial products,” Houck added. “We’ve got a material that can go through and generate hydrogen that goes into a fuel cell, but we aren’t making
the fuel cell. We aren’t putting them into a package with a user’s manual for someone, so we need someone to make that product consumer-friendly.”
“It can generate power ”
on demand in the field, wherever we need it.
Within the Army itself, creating a consumer-ready product is done through, for example, the U.S. Army Armament Research, Devel- opment and Engineering Center, product managers and program executive offices, Houck said. But if a product is produced commercially, then the Army can buy it back and tailor it to military requirements.
‘EAT ME’
A new hydrogen fuel source, nanogalvanic alumi- num-based powder opens up many new possibilities, from standard fuel cells and internal combustion engines to on-demand battery power for personal devices, all the way up to a future that could include self-cannibalizing drones. While such a drone is just a pie-in-the-sky idea at the moment, the logistical implications are intriguing.
The conceptual drone’s structure would be made of bimetallic tubes, Dowding said. Inside the tube would be a layer of the nanogalvanic aluminum composition, while the outside would be made of conventional aluminum alloy. Water would flow through the actual structure of the drone, reacting with the layer of nanogalvanic aluminum to create hydrogen that would act as a secondary or emer- gency fuel source. Parts of the drone would, in effect, become sacrificial. “The idea is that you can have it eat away part of itself that is not very impor- tant to keep going and create energy from that,” Roberts said.
This would eliminate the need for a cumbersome fuel tank or power source, potentially making the drone smaller and more maneuverable.
A LOGISTICAL DREAM COME TRUE Te powder is an exciting breakthrough for ARL and the Army, particularly for the logistics involved in energy distribution. “One of the major issues now with the distribution of energy is usually JP-8 in large bladders,” Houck said. JP-8, or Jet Propellant 8, is the fuel used in most military systems now. Tese bladders of JP-8 contain a large liquid volume and are somewhat fragile. “It is very difficult to airdrop liquids in these large bladders. Tey have a tendency to burst when they hit the ground,” Houck said.
“If you shoot them, they get a hole in them and stuff sprays out,” he continued. “So one of the advantages of this powder is it being a solid, whether it’s in powder form or compressed tablet form.” If shot, it will just break, maintaining all of its properties even in pieces. It won’t catch fire, it won’t explode—unlike what the high-pressure hydrogen fuel cylinders used today might do if they rupture. Te powder gives the Army the ability to store “energy capacity, the ability to generate energy in a safe and nonvolatile form for transport,” he said.
Te powder, which can be manufactured in any quantity, can be scaled down in volume enough that Soldiers could carry their own supply. “I can just have however much of it I want, again, either in powder or this Alka-Seltzer-type tablet form, and then
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