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Posted by: beavith1 8 months, 2 weeks ago
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beavith18 months, 2 weeks 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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BB648 months, 2 weeks ago
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beavith18 months, 2 weeks ago
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i think the mechanism is important, but the chemistry of the Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) is pretty peculiar.
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photosynthesis has a Mg center. hemoglobin, as all us red blooded americans know ;-) , is based on Fe. N fixation by bacteria is based on Mo.
if we can reproduce the Ru work in something like Ni, it'd have a whole lot more utility.
On the other hand, if it only works with Ru, lets start mining asteroids!
the next obvious question to study is how well this works in steam. it seems to take quite a bit of energy to recover the H2.
(sigh) i guess there still is no such thing as a free lunch.
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hyperbola8 months, 2 weeks 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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beavith18 months, 2 weeks ago
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PGMs are a mining term. it includes all those elements in that region of the periodic table because they have similar mining properties. they don't have truly minable ores (except Pt, and even that is not very concentrated) and are concentrated from other worked ores. for instance Re is mainly collected from Ni mining.
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if there were cheap sources of any of them, they would be more widely used, just because of their myriad uses. Pt and Pd demand are close to world production. other PGMs? economically important curiosities..
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