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New Catalyst Is Better At Splitting Water Into Hydrogen And Oxygen (phys.org)
schwit1 shared an article from Phys.org:
Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen to produce clean energy can be simplified with a single catalyst developed by scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston. The electrolytic film produced at Rice and tested at Houston is a three-layer structure of nickel, graphene and a compound of iron, manganese and phosphorus. The foamy nickel gives the film a large surface, the conductive graphene protects the nickel from degrading and the metal phosphide carries out the reaction... Rice chemist Kenton Whitmire and Houston electrical and computer engineer Jiming Bao and their labs developed the film to overcome barriers that usually make a catalyst good for producing either oxygen or hydrogen, but not both simultaneously... Whitmire said the material is scalable and should find use in industries that produce hydrogen and oxygen or by solar- and wind-powered facilities that can use electrocatalysis to store off-peak energy.
In a comment on the original submission, Slashdot reader Martin S. opines, "If we can crack H20 and C02 we could make fuel to run existing vehicles with existing infrastructure and that fuel could be carbon neutral by using off peak renewable energy from wind farms and solar."
In a comment on the original submission, Slashdot reader Martin S. opines, "If we can crack H20 and C02 we could make fuel to run existing vehicles with existing infrastructure and that fuel could be carbon neutral by using off peak renewable energy from wind farms and solar."
For passenger vehicles. And they always will be
After all, we'll always have enough water, right?
shouldn't be a problem
"is a three-layer structure of nickel, graphene and a compound of iron, manganese and phosphorus"
that requires graphene.... aka unobtainium for at least the next couple decades
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Also IIRC, these catalysts require very high temperatures.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Graphene comes from clean coal, and President Trump is making it easier for coal miners to be employed again. So expect graphene production to be huge.
Which is that?
Do current combustion motors run on hydrogen? Not really.
Are current cars able to contain hydrogen? Not really.
Are current tankers able to transport hydrogen gas? Not really, they're made for a liquid.
Are current gas stations able to dispense hydrogen? Nope, a station's storage, machinery and dispenser nozzle sure as hell aren't made for a gas.
So I'm not seeing much reuse potential here. Now the end-game would look kinda similar to a gasoline infrastructure on the surface, except for the part where you have to replace all the simple tanks and pumps with far trickier pressure vessels and regulators.
Rice chemist Kenton Whitmire and Houston electrical and computer engineer Jiming Bao and their labs developed the film to overcome barriers that usually make a catalyst good for producing either oxygen or hydrogen, but not both simultaneously. "Regular metals sometimes oxidize during catalysis," Whitmire said. "Normally, a hydrogen evolution reaction is done in acid and an oxygen evolution reaction is done in base. We have one material that is stable whether it's in an acidic or basic solution."
So, they have a catalyzer which is good for both oxygen and hydrogen production, but not both simultaneous at the same time?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
...and thus alkaline electrolyzers remain the most economical and flexible option. Kind of ironic.
Ezekiel 23:20
laws change, new tech breaks those barriers on occasion
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Fortunately, when you burn the cracked components of water, you end up with...water.
Night? Any time solar is available is, like, time to use power? I for one don't sleep that much when the sun is up...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
As far as I understand the graphene is only there to protect the nickel from oxidation, so it's possible that it will be replaced with something cheaper.
> ...graphene.... aka unobtainium for at least the next couple decades
Looks like graphene is easily obtainable. I spent less than two minutes finding this supplier of graphene and graphene accessories:
www.sigmaaldrich.com/materials-science/material-science-products.html?TablePage=112007852
Their parent company appears to be a division of the Merck Group, so I would expect that the storefront is totally legit.
Making Hydrogen isn't hard at all. The problem is safely bottling it up, transporting it to a useful location, filling a vehicle tank with it, making that tank safe for standard DOT highway compliant vehicles, and then converting the stored chemical power into electricity without needing a half kilo of platinum per vehicle.
laws change, new tech breaks those barriers on occasion
You're fucking retarded if you think new tech is going to break some barrier that changes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Cycles and circles. Unless you collect the oxygen instead for industrial use, but then you would have just burnt it with something else somewhere else - and it would replace industrial oxygen created by cooling and distilling the air.....
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The article and abstract don't say, so what temperature would this be used at?
Hydrogen production at the moment from natural gas (using platinum) needs a bit of heat anyway.
As far as I understand the graphene is only there to protect the nickel from oxidation, so it's possible that it will be replaced with something cheaper.
I have to wonder why they used it in the 1st place if there are alternatives. It's likely that there are no alternatives, for now.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
But I doubt this will happen. The technology for electric vehicles is moving apace, will soon become less expensive than the high-level engineering required to produce an internal combustion drivetrain, and it is much more convenient and cheaper to run. The writing is on the wall for the internal combustion engine.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Also IIRC, these catalysts require very high temperatures.
Where do you get that from? From what is written here it appears to be happening in liquid water:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
Plug Power rec'd backing for several hundred millions from Amazon and Walmart for fuel cells for warehouse forklifts. More specialized use cases like a forklift may offer better potential near term since vehicles operate around a central location. Later the storage , transport costs which appear high for suburban homes may not need for personal use. Instead focus on fleet vehicles where economies of scale more practical. Modest technological advances like catalysts will help but a ways off for wide spread deployments. Japan seems to be only place with optimism that fuel cells might be a solution and investing in R&D. Japan needs especially as nuclear was a literal disaster and could be again due to seismic volatility of landscape. Still some danger in fuel cells but overall lower and not long term.
The graphene is only there to protect the nickel from oxidation
Spanish to English,
Clean coal and odorless shit. The two fantasies that every industrialist tries to convince you of.
Food prices sky rocketed as cars began consuming the same food as humans.
On which planet?
Poor people starved to death in the thousands.
On which planet?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Where do you get that from?
This is what I was thinking of: "The Guardian is reporting that Nocera has developed a catalyst from cobalt and phosphorus which can be used to split water at room temperature", which strongly implies that other methods require higher temperatures.
These are the much higher temperatures.
From what is written here it appears to be happening in liquid water
All that abstract says is "water".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Remember what happened when Ethanol was advocated for saving the environment? Food prices sky rocketed as cars began consuming the same food as humans.
That's not how distilled water works. It takes energy as input no matter what purpose you put it to. If we don't have fuel then we don't go and then we don't have food, either. So if you're making fuel with water instead of putting it into humans, well, it's still part of being able to put food into humans.
It is daft to use farmland to produce fuel, but we could be building algae raceway ponds in the desert and stirring them with solar paddlewheels, then making the algae into biofuel; centrifuge out the lipids and make green diesel, use the remainder to make butanol, and anything left is compost which we can use for desert reclamation. Grow it on seawater pumped inland using solar thermal.
Might be more efficient to make big flat lakes and use skimmers, at that scale. But the ponds already exist. No new technology is needed to make them go.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There are three big problems with electrolysis of water for hydrogen. One, catalyst durability. Two, availability of sufficiently clean feed stock. Three, low efficiency of the process, both overall (see point two) and at the actual point of electrolysis.
These researchers claim to have solved problem one and addressed problem three, though I did skim the article and I don't recall seeing any specific percentage improvements mentioned... nope, I read it again, there's nothing like that in there. I'll wait for some functional testing before I get all excited about efficiency improvements. The argument is often made that efficiency doesn't matter because you're using power that would otherwise go to waste, but that's a dumb argument. Higher efficiency means a smaller catalyst, a lower footprint, and a lower cost, which means greater proliferation.
The issue isn't that it's hard, the issue is that it's inefficient and thus expensive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It still (and always will) takes more energy to split water into H2 and O2 than is released putting it back together. It is an efficient way to store energy, but it doesn't make energy, it uses it. This is a battery, not a power source.
Earth. Just because you don't want to believe something doesn't mean it's not true.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2013/01/09/ethanol-mandates-cause-hunger-and-child-malnutrition-in-guatemala/
Curious. Where does the water go?
Food prices sky rocketed
I seriously, don't think you understand the sheer amount of corn that is grown in the US. To think that the small amount of ethanol that we produce actually affects the price of corn (and everything that relies on it) is seriously laughable. Business people are always looking for scapegoats to jack up the prices dude. That's like US economics 101. War in Iraq? Hell, raise the price of gasoline. Flood in Japan? Raise the price of Kraft cheese singles. Brexit? Might as well add $3 for everything made of cotton.
Poor people starved to death in the thousands
They got you hook, line, and sinker. The US alone has millions starving and the rationale for that is really complicated. However, people have pointed to the hungry in the US as proof for all kinds of things. Lack of religion in the the US, illegal immigration, terrorist, etc. So no one is surprised that someone decided to put the whole ethanol thing on the backs of the hungry as well.
Ethanol was a highly inefficiency gas
You'll get no argument from me here. Ethanol runs best in cars that are specifically made to run on that fuel. There's flex fuel cars that change the stroke of the engine to compensate for a higher mix of ethanol. They're alright, but an engine specifically made for the fuel would be better.
Don't get me wrong.
The ethanol industry aren't the most honest folks either. Someone decided that corn was the only supply of fuel when there's plenty of research that could have gone into producing fuel from Kudzu, a weed that no one really wants. That's just farmers wanting to make more and more money and in reality, whoever subsidizes their farm, is making an even bigger cut. These farmers usually just put into crap contracts that ensure they'll never become solvent in 100 years. Any new industry they try to expand into, the person with the funds eventually figures out how to get their cut before the farmer. So yeah, the ethanol folks aren't exactly hands clean either. But don't go buying that made up crap that ethanol is increasing your food prices. That's just bull they're using to charge you more for less food. Climate change thus far has had a way bigger impact than ethanol will ever have on the price of food. Even then, that plays only second to sheer greed and opportunity to jack up prices on unsuspecting dolts.
Or, for the book worms amongst us...
(And it's a damn good read!)
I'd wager a guess that the lunatic globalists steal it! and send it to Mars, where Elon takes all of the richest lunatic globalists after Earth has been overconsumed to the hilt...?
I assume the laws of Australia trump those of physics, just like the do math https://science.slashdot.org/s...
Enough with these nay-sayers already! They don't seem to have even basic reading comprehension skills and even less knowledge of the materials sciences that goes into developing new catalysts.
Finding a way to close the fuel cycle for fuel cells is the key to creating a usable power source for transportation and for storing energy while also controlling the "carbon dioxide (CO2) cycle" that releases too much excessive carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
And the Trump comments are just morons being moronic. A pure waste of bandwidth and the time it takes to wade through all the worthless BS that the comments sections of any given article on /. seems to degenerate into.
At what point does all the BS just drown out any meaningful discussion of the topic with the sheer numbers of plainly stupid comments?
Just call me frustrated with the lack of real moderation on this site.
PlaynBass
I've never been a fan of cracking water to separate the H and O and then burning it. Sure, it's clean, but the cool thing about water is it doesn't go away. Wanna really see the environment get f---ed, start permanently removing water from Earth so we can have clean smelling tail pipes but the whole planet turns into a desert. Now, if we can find ways to add water to the planet from outside such as mining asteroids and comets, great. Break that stuff down and burn!
Which, even at extremely high pressures doesn't stay a liquid at extremely high temperatures.
So it's a guess based on a headline somewhere else NINE YEARS AGO about something almost, but not quite, completely different? Fair enough, but you could have said so.
So it's a guess based on a headline somewhere else NINE YEARS AGO
Congratulations on skipping right past the link embedded in the sentence "These are the much higher temperatures."
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Given that those things in the second link are not similar to the material being discussed either are you really in a position to be so critical?
Since my original comment ("Also IIRC, these catalysts require very high temperatures.") is in no way, shape or form critical (it is skeptical, which is different), your comment is Yet Another Example of your poor reading comprehension skills. Or at least your apparently burning desire to find something -- however nonsensical -- to criticize me about.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Obviously your rebukes of me for asking questions are the critical bit. What's with the thin skin and the rebukes?
What an utter waste of time. If it's a wild guess and you haven't even looked at the abstract (or missed the little pic with the bubbles) just say so instead of trying so hard to justify irrelevancy.
As for attacking my reading age or whatever - that's kind of pathetic. Do you frequently bully the kiddies that way?
or missed the little pic with the bubbles
I see no picture of bubbles in either of these web pages: /. post: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221128551730441X?via%3Dihub
From the
From your comment: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-scientists-robust-catalyst-hydrogen-oxygen.html
Do you frequently bully the kiddies that way?
I'm smart enough to figure out that someone with a /. id number just slightly higher than mine is in no way shape or form a "kiddie". Thus, as usual, your comment is wrong.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Then what's with the playground insult about reading age? It gets used a lot around here by the more pathetic types who want to assert their dominance over children - were you using it for a different reason? Either way it's somewhat a ridiculous insult to use at the level of discussion between any bunch that has even heard of a catalyst.
I see you ignored my reply about the bubbles. To paraphrase Eun Ji-won, "Show me the bubbles!"
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Follow the link from the article summary FFS!
Then head from there to the link to the abstract.
Why did you even bother posting if you are this lost?
Since I already posted a link to the abstract and explicitly stated that there were no pictures of bubbles, maybe your problem is that you need (stronger) glasses.
Or maybe you just like to troll.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Me? You are a bit slow. What do you think your posting of deliberate misinformation in order to play games with readers is called - four letters, starts with T.