Zinc economy
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The zinc economy is a concept similar to the hydrogen economy, methanol economy, ethanol economy, lithium economy or liquid nitrogen economy. The zinc economy is an alternative to or a route toward a hydrogen economy.
[edit] Description
Under the zinc economy, metallic elemental zinc would be used as an alternative to elemental hydrogen as an energy transfer medium (a fuel). The zinc would be either used in a zinc-air battery or used to generate hydrogen by electrolysis near the point of use.
A major disadvantage is that zinc is not liquid, and cannot be pumped as a fuel. Batteries using it would have to be dismounted and disassembled. The scheme normally proposed would mount the batteries in an interchangeable tray on the underside of a vehicle. Automated equipment would exchange trays when motorists drove into a battery-exchange bay. A regional plant would use automated equipment to disassemble the trays and reprocess the zinc into new trays.
Hydrogen generated from zinc and water could be burned in conventional internal combustion engines, although this would provide a far less powerful engine than a hydrocarbon-powered engine; a better alternative would be the use of high efficiency electric motors to exploit the power produced by a zinc-air battery and drive the vehicle.
Zinc has a number of advantages over hydrogen as an energy-carrier. Zinc fuel cells (usually called zinc-air batteries) are already efficient enough for practical use in vehicles. Zinc is inexpensive, non-toxic, substantially easier to store than hydrogen, and can be processed by water-based electrochemistry. As an engineering material, zinc is conductive, resists corrosion (it's the coating used to galvanize steel), and is easy to fabricate (it is the most common material used in die castings). Some alloys are almost as strong as mild steel.
