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This is another Aluminium Air battery, same concept different metal. None of them considers splitting water is energy intensive and inefficient. Another hydrogen fool cell category fuel imo.

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Who cares if it's energy intensive or inefficient if our other option for using the energy is to run it through a big resistor or to not produce it in the first place? This is a tool for repeatedly storing and releasing excess energy from power plants that can't control their output in response to grid conditions. Let's supposed for the sake of argument that battery banks were prohibitively expensive in some applications, and that hydroelectric storage was too damaging to the local environment. In those cases, your only option is to either dissipate any excess energy or to not produce it in the first place.

What this does, then, is provide you an alternative storage medium that is relatively inert until you want to use it. And it provides you a simple self-sustatining scalable chemical reaction that can be started by supplying some initial heat and then goes on to produce even more heat steadily and continuously until you run out of fuel.

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