"To produce hydrogen, water (H2O) can be converted into hydrogen gas (H2) by means of a series of chemical processes. However, as water molecules are very stable, splitting them into hydrogen and oxygen presents a big challenge to chemists. For it to succeed at all, the water first has to be activated using a catalyst – then it reacts more easily. A team of researchers led by Prof. Armido Studer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Münster University has developed a photocatalytic process in which water, under mild reaction conditions, is activated through triaryl phosphines and not, as in most other processes, through transition metal complexes."
Also:
"Dr. Jingjing Zhang, who carried out the experimental work, adds: “The hydrogen atoms of the activated water can be transferred to alkenes and arenes under very mild conditions, in so-called hydrogenation reactions.” Hydrogenation reactions are enormously important in pharmaceutical research, in the agrochemical industry and in materials sciences."
Suggesting applications might relate more to hidden enrichment than hydrogen gas production per se?
On a tangential note, how do you pronounce the second researcher's name? Zhang as to my knowledge is pronounced with a distinct "Jha" aspirated sound, correct?
Back to the article though, from what I understand, the alkenes and arenes merely act as the catalyst for the reactions, so the article calling them the equivalent of hydrogenation reactions seems incorrect. Perhaps, a more equivalent term would be temporary hydrogenation.
It sounds sort of like "Jong" or "Chang" with the a sound from Spanish not the a in "cat", but most Americans pronounce it like zang rhymes with tang, and mostly no one complains about it. I had a Chinese American friend who mostly introduced herself with the wrong pronunciation but after we talked about it, I saw her do an introduction with the right pronunciation. It's a hard problem because there's very little sound overlap between English and Mandarin, and this is made worse by using Pinyin spelling, which is designed for use by native speakers and not English speakers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_(surname)
One solution would be to translate it to Archer. :-)
I can’t make heads or tails of this, since Chinese pronunciation and romanized spelling is all over the map.
If the name is expected to be read as Mandarin (which is reasonably likely but not at all certain), written in Pinyin (which is likely), then, with a mild Taiwanese Mandarin accent, it would be fairly close to “jaw” but with an ng sound at the end instead of a w. If it’s pronounced with an accent from closer to Beijing, then the initial consonant would be retroflexed, which doesn’t occur in English. It sounds a bit like “zhrrrr” where the “zh” part is somewhat similar to the j in jaw. If it’s a stronger Taiwanese accent, the initial consonant could be more like “dz”. But it could be something else entirely.
Then there’s the tone, and the tone mark is missing entirely. It’s highly unlikely that this means it’s 5th-tone (as it would be if it were real Pinyin), and it’s probably first tone in this case. You can find guides online.
It's the retroflex version of "Zang", where the "z" is sort of like a "t" followed by an "s" sound. "Retroflex" means that the tongue bends a little bit backwards and therefore touches the palate a little bit farther back. Don't sweat it too much, for most people the whole series of s/sh, z/zh, c/ch, and x/j/q are hard to consistently get right unless they are corrected by a teacher. Also, since romanized Chinese names usually lack tone marks, some ambiguity regarding the correct pronunciation remains.
The paper isn't about splitting water to yield hydrogen and oxygen gas which would be useful for energy applications. It's about a new way to make radical hydrogen (1 protein plus 1 electron) which is useful for synthesizing some organic compounds. It will be helpful for synthetic chemists and will make it easier to explore hydrogen radical chemistry. It may replace some processes that currently require transition metal catalysts, especially Samarium which is a rare earth element.
Anything that creates hydrogen radicals could conceivably be used to construct electricity-producing fuel cells.
Fuel cells normally radicalize hydrogen by contacting hydrogen with platinum catalysts under extreme conditions, requiring expensive and tricky design.
If this new process can do the same in mild conditions with inexpensive organic catalysts under exposure to light, it could lead to more economical fuel cell designs.
If I'm not mistaken this doesn't appear to be a catalyst. The reaction is driven by the irreversible formation of a strong P=O double bond, and the reagents are consumed. So great for chemical synthesis, but no clear path to fuel cell type reactions.
I did not look at the source paper before posting, but the paper makes it clear you're right.
However, the Wikipedia page titled "Phosphine Oxide" states that reduction of the oxide back to its original state is straightforwardly done with cheap reagents.
“In chemistry, a radical, also known as a free radical, is an atom, molecule, or ion that has at least one unpaired valence electron. With some exceptions, these unpaired electrons make radicals highly chemically reactive. Many radicals spontaneously dimerize. Most organic radicals have short lifetimes.”
"the opposite". You need mildly polluted water to make it easier to split molecules (pure water requires way more energy to split apart). In this paper, they specifically want the impurities to accept the hydrogen.
It's great for backpacking as it weighs much less and takes up less space in your pack. All you have to do is add water, shake it up, and your drink is ready in less than 15 seconds. Maybe the astronauts can take advantage too.
you laugh but i've always thought it would be great to carry a kilo of pure hydrogen in my backpack - just burn it to obtain like 5 litres of water ... I mean why are we carrying all that oxygen in our backpacks when he atmosphere has a plentiful supply of it...
Maybe we need mini packblimps that can not only carry fuel, but part of the pack, the dog, the kid, etc. It could have AI assisted propeller machetes to hack away at wayward branches, geofenced to protect endangered flora of course.
Then if you add some condensing coils and a transparent roof, you could also just leave the backpacking food in there and it'll slowly get moist and solar cook. After a twelve hour hike you'd get lukewarm edible mud, mmm.
Explosions are a minor risk, but if you can make water out of the hydrogen anyway, surely you can put out any resultant wildfires.
Guess we have to get rid of the props and just tether it to the pack like a balloon.
Seriously though, I've often wondered if a weather balloon style lifter tethered to a backpack could help it be lighter. Probably with a less flammable gas, and only in sparsely forested areas.
Less flammable would be Helium. It just so happens that the US is looking to sell the strategic helium reserve. So you just need to find a VC and you can get your backpacker's assistant idea off the ground. hehe
as far as helium balloon, it would have to be a balloon of such enormous size to be of any benefit. To launch a couple pounds of payload to 90k feet required a balloon 8' in diameter on the ground.
Great, so if I have a 25kg sack, a 1 meter sphere being trailed above is only going to make it 24kg. Like I originally stated, a few pounds required an 8' diameter balloon, so 2.5m balloon. That's friggin huge. FYI, at 90k' altitude, the balloon expanded to about 40' before reaching it's burst limit allowing for a return of the payload.
Have you ever actually seen a canister of hydrogen? Specifically, have you ever felt the weight of that canister? I'd rather just carry the 8lbs of a gallon of water. At least it gets lighter as the water is depleted
Well, the same amount of hydrogen (as in 1kg of water) in the form of methane only weighs ~450g though. And methane, conveniently, turns into H2O when burned.
So in principle you could carry a bottle of methane and burn that to get water. ;-)
roughly half the weight, plus the weight of the burner equipment. again, that weight still remains even after the supply of fuel to make water is depleted. a just of water gets lighter. by the end of the hike, this is very much a nice quality
What do you expect to do, open the valve, flick a Bic, and the water is going to start flowing? Come on. This was a fun nonsensical thread, and you're now trying to turn it into a magic trick rather than goofy science. You have to capture the flame's exhaust, pressurize it, and whatever other sciencey stuff to get the waste into a liquid
I mean, it's completely outside of viability, but it's not breaking ground science. You could do it perfectly well in a lab (if you had any reason to).
There's a lot of things that can be done in a lab, but bringing it to the real world is totally different. Nevermind fitting this in the original concept of backpacking
You can turn methane into water in theory. And you can technically do it in a lab (even though the easiest way by far to do it uses a lot of water). You can't do it on your backpack.
The way I was picturing it, you light the balloon and, besides some burn marks and a boom heard miles away, water appears in its place and falls into a bucket you placed below.
Not like I know how this stuff works. Someone says methane turns into water when burned, I imagine based on farts that it floats like in a nice balloon or Hindenburg, I figure this do be how this was intended ¯\_(:))_/¯
Carbon is lighter than oxygen, so their plan would work if they brought fully saturated hydrocarbons including ones so long-chain that they were solid at room temperature.
You just described coal. So, you're suggesting taking coal on a backpacking trip along with a very heavy canister of hydrogen. To make water? Anything else you want to do to help destroy the environment you're backpacking through?
You realize this whole thread started with the concept of dehydrated water, right?
Just need a longer string for the balloon and it'll be ok. And hike in places with less trees (although, after a few mishaps, the trails you frequent will have less trees, too).
Yup transport hydrogen up a pipe, convert to water and extract electricity, and then use gravity forces to turn the turbine, then convert back to hydrogen, repeat.
"To produce hydrogen, water (H2O) can be converted into hydrogen gas (H2) by means of a series of chemical processes. However, as water molecules are very stable, splitting them into hydrogen and oxygen presents a big challenge to chemists. For it to succeed at all, the water first has to be activated using a catalyst – then it reacts more easily. A team of researchers led by Prof. Armido Studer at the Institute of Organic Chemistry at Münster University has developed a photocatalytic process in which water, under mild reaction conditions, is activated through triaryl phosphines and not, as in most other processes, through transition metal complexes."
Also:
"Dr. Jingjing Zhang, who carried out the experimental work, adds: “The hydrogen atoms of the activated water can be transferred to alkenes and arenes under very mild conditions, in so-called hydrogenation reactions.” Hydrogenation reactions are enormously important in pharmaceutical research, in the agrochemical industry and in materials sciences."
Suggesting applications might relate more to hidden enrichment than hydrogen gas production per se?