New Way To Split Water Into Hydrogen And Oxygen Developed »
Posted By myfairlady 7 months ago in Science & TechnologyThe design of efficient systems for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, driven by sunlight is among the most important challenges facing science today, underpinning the long term potential of hydrogen as a clean, sustainable fuel. But man-made systems that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents. In this context, it is important to establish new mechanisms by which water splitting can take place.
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windfrostComment removed: Hard Banned
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beavith17 months ago
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interesting science.
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the problem here is that the complex is built around ruthenium. its part of the platinum group elements that you've never heard before: rhodium, osmium, rhenium, iridium and palladium.
they are rare and expensive here on earth.
hmmmm. actually, those elements are much more common on iron-nickel meteoroid/asteroids. just one more reason to explore the solar system...-
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BB647 months ago
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hyperbola7 months ago
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Actually ruthenium is part of the palladium series, not the platinum series. Its abundance is similar to that of molybdenum, platinum, gold, ... in fact, it is one of the common "impurities" in gold and platinum mining activities and could probably be obtained about as efficiently as those metals if there were sufficient demand.
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One should, of course, also remember that there are hundreds of research groups pursuing similar goals worldwide and this one is not particularly different from many others. Perhaps the final result will be a biological system, or a pseudo-biological system?
Genetically Engineered Blood Protein Can Be Used To Split Water Into Oxygen And Hydrogen
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/06120...
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frctm57 months ago
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Given its abundance in water, hydrogen offers great promise as an alternative fuel. However, as a vehicle propellant, it still has many problems. Storage is the biggest issue with hydrogen. Liquefying it or compressing it requires energy. Three basic methods are used to store hydrogen. One is an insulated tank that keeps the gas cold enough to remain in a liquid state, another is just an old fashion high pressure welding style tank. The third method is hydrogen absorbing metals but their capacity is very limited. The insulated tank will not keep the hydrogen in your car indefinitely. If you let it sit to long, the gas will eventually evaporate. Welding tanks are very heavy and can't be charged safely at a service station. More likely it would just be swapped out for a new tank. Hydrogen is also extremely dangerous. It will ignite in a much broader ratio of fuel to air mixtures than gasoline. Anything from 5% to 75% is ignitable. Every car would be a potential bomb in a traffic accident.
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beavith17 months ago
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tadair9197 months ago
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ruthenium rock, eh?
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you know, i've seen something like this before.
follow this link:
http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/watercar/h20ca...
and watch the video at the bottom.
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prophyporcritesComment removed: Spammer, Hard Banned
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chevydog7 months ago
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Interesting article. Ruthenium is of course pretty scarce. And making an organo-metallic compound of it would repesent some pretty sophisticated chemistry.
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Hopefully, this is a real advance and not just another cold fusion episode.
For the cynically minded, I offer a "law" propounded by a chemist friend-- In any field of experimental endeavor, the most promising results are obtained immediately and are not reproducible.-
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tadair9197 months ago
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you could buy ruthenium for pretty cheap.
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http://www.shopmetals.co.uk/ruthenium_rod.html
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