TECHNOLOGY FOCUS - INORGANIC CHEMISTRY - Preferred Method: The magnesium, silicon, and corrosion-facilitating agent are contacted during an initial contacting process to form a precursor mixture and the salt is contacted with the precursor mixture in a second contacting process to form a final mixture. The method further comprises forming the final mixture into a pellet. The magnesium is of a size small enough that it will sift through a 30 mesh sieve and large enough that it will not sift through a 100 mesh sieve. In the method, contacting comprises: mechanically mixing consisting of ball milling, tumbling, jet milling, attritor milling and impact milling; and forming the mixture into a pellet. In the method, reacting comprises: dosing the aqueous solution into the mixture; and dosing the mixture into the aqueous solution. The reacting is an uncontrolled batch process. Preferred Components: The salts comprise sodium chloride, potassium chloride and/or calcium chloride. The ratio of silicon to magnesium in the mixture is less than or equal to 30 and greater than or equal to 15 parts silicon per 100 parts magnesium by weight. The ratio of iron to magnesium in the mixture is 15 parts of silicon per 100 parts of magnesium and 25 parts of silicon per 100 parts of magnesium by weight. The salt comprises sodium chloride. The sodium chloride concentration in the aqueous solution is greater than 1% (preferably greater than or equal to 5%) and less than 20% (preferably less than or equal to 11%). The aqueous solution comprises water and a salt. The silicon is crystalline silicon. Preferred Composition: The composition further comprises: a corrosion facilitating agent; and a fire retardant, a processing agent, a binder and/or a lubricant, where the corrosion-facilitating agent is iron (preferred), nickel, cobalt and/or copper. The mixture further comprises two or more salts. The composition is pressed into a pellet. EXAMPLE - Coarse mesh magnesium powder (99.8% grade) and finer 325 mesh crystalline silicon powder (99.0-99.3% grade). The pellets employed the same amount of magnesium but different amounts of silicon. The powders were tumble mixed together in advance of pressing the mixture into pellets. The dry powder mixtures were then hot-pressed into 2.13 cm diameter pellets at 7.5 tons for 2 minutes in a 4-piston mold preheated to 180 degrees C. The resulting pellets were slightly brittle and hydrophobic. Aqueous sodium chloride solutions (5% and 11%) were used to hydrolyze the samples. The amount of solution used in each case was 6 ml. Each sample was then hydrolyzed for 30 minutes and worked up to afford hydrogen.