Posted on 05/18/2011 11:03:16 AM PDT by Red Badger
An international team, of scientists, led by a team at Monash University has found the key to the hydrogen economy could come from a very simple mineral, commonly seen as a black stain on rocks.
Their findings, developed with the assistance of researchers at UC Davis in the USA and using the facilities at the Australian Synchrotron, was published in the journal Nature Chemistry on May 15, 2011.
Professor Leone Spiccia from the School of Chemistry at Monash University said the ultimate goal of researchers in this area is to create a cheap, efficient way to split water, powered by sunlight, which would open up production of hydrogen as a clean fuel, and leading to long-term solutions for our renewable energy crisis.
To achieve this, they have been studying complex catalysts designed to mimic the catalysts plants use to split water with sunlight. But the new study shows that there might be much simpler alternatives to hand.
"The hardest part about turning water into fuel is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, but the team at Monash seems to have uncovered the process, developing a water-splitting cell based on a manganese-based catalyst," Professor Spiccia said.
"Birnessite, it turns out, is what does the work. Like other elements in the middle of the Periodic Table, manganese can exist in a number of what chemists call oxidation states. These correspond to the number of oxygen atoms with which a metal atom could be combined," Professor Spiccia said.
"When an electrical voltage is applied to the cell, it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen and when the researchers carefully examined the catalyst as it was working, using advanced spectroscopic methods they found that it had decomposed into a much simpler material called birnessite, well-known to geologists as a black stain on many rocks."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
[ you really can’t extract any more energy from water than you add to it. It’s the law. ]
Unless the two gasses are separated easily.. and you burn them..
No, there is no unless.
Catalysts only reduce the amount of excess energy wasted in the conversion. You still need to put in all the energy that you want to extract as combustion heat, and then some. Repeating the contrary position again will not make it any more valid.
Prove it...
"There are none so blind as those who will not see."
These principles have been rigorously proven and re-proven over hundreds of years. The onus is on those who hold that there are exceptions, to prove them.
One wonder if you even read (and understand the implications) of the article..
Well since you won’t, or can’t, make or defend a point, that’s a pretty empty one-liner.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.