A New Way To Make Water, And Fuel Cells

Roland Piquepaille writes "You probably know that it is easy to combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water. After all, this chemical reaction is known for more than two centuries. But now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have discovered a new way to make water. As states the UIUC report, 'not only can they make water from unlikely starting materials, such as alcohols, their work could also lead to better catalysts and less expensive fuel cells.' But be warned: don't read the technical paper itself. It could win an obfuscated contest — if such a contest existed for scientific papers." Yet another advance in fuel cell technology; we discussed a different one just the other day.

Comments

Pet Peeve: UIUC

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

No one in the state calls it UIUC, except for University of Illinois at Chicago students and alumni who get upset when you call it U of I. Every one else just calls it Illinois. It confuses everyone else when its referred to as UIUC.

Re:Pet Peeve: UIUC

[djcapelis]

Actually "everyone else" might just be defined to be people who aren't in your state... last I checked there were more people not from Illinois than those from Illinois. (And if you have to pick a segment to confuse, I'd think you'd want to pick the ones who are near the place and can probably figure it out.)

Good to know either way, but whether you like it or not, the majority of folks know it best as UIUC. Sorry that you're so well known and all. :)

Also, if they don't want to be known as UIUC, perhaps a change of domain name is in order...

ohnoitsroland

[Corwn of Amber]

Oh, no, it's Roland!

The Snake-Oil X-Man!

sigh

[wizardforce]

The reaction rate of oxidizing hydrogen or even many alcohols isn't a problem with the catalysts in current use, the porblem is that the catalysts are based on platinum, rhodium etc.. which are extremely expensive. The catalyst in this case is based on Iridium which is also very expensive, if not more so than Platinum. Lcohols are not an unusual starting material for making water and giving off large amounts of energy in an oxidation reaction. Methanol for example, in contact with Platinum in air will oxidize to formaldehyde and water releasing enough heat to eventually cause the platinum to glow red. This is in fact used to great effect in certain fire-starting mechanisms.

Free Energy

[Doc Ruby]

All these chemicals are just storage media for energy released by the fuel cells. Where is all that alcohol supposed to come from, Russia's motherlode of vodka wells?

Making the alcohol consumes the very energy released by the fuel cells along with water. If the alcohol is fermented vegetation, that bacterial process consumes some of the energy to process the higher-energy sugars and carbohydrates in the vegetation. The vegetation is the key, because it converts the actual source of energy, sunlight, into those sugars. But by the time the alcohol hits the fuel cell, already over 95% of the sun's energy is lost in other processes before the final 50-80% max efficiency is applied to the usable 5%.

This is not about "making water".

[argent]

This is about "generating power in a fuel cell".

Poor Zachariah Heiden made some comment that included the partial sentence "unconventional metal hydrides can be used for a chemical process called oxygen reduction, which is an essential part of the process of making water", and all the context got thrown away.

The actual paper seems to be "Homogeneous Catalytic Reduction of Dioxygen Using Transfer
Hydrogenation Catalysts".