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A New Way To Make Water, And Fuel Cells

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 03, 2007 03:40 PM
from the it's-in-the-drinking-water dept.
Power Science
Roland Piquepaille writes "You probably know that it is easy to combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water. After all, this chemical reaction is known for more than two centuries. But now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have discovered a new way to make water. As states the UIUC report, 'not only can they make water from unlikely starting materials, such as alcohols, their work could also lead to better catalysts and less expensive fuel cells.' But be warned: don't read the technical paper itself. It could win an obfuscated contest — if such a contest existed for scientific papers." Yet another advance in fuel cell technology; we discussed a different one just the other day.
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[+] New Catalyst May Be a Boost For Fuel Cells 130 comments
Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at the University of Houston (UH) have developed a new platinum-based catalyst for fuel cells that is at least four times more efficient and cheaper than existing catalysts. This discovery in fuel cell research may ease reliance on gasoline. According to the researchers, the active phase of the catalyst consists of nanoparticles with a platinum-rich shell and a core made of an alloy of copper, cobalt, and platinum. But it's not enough for this new catalyst to be more efficient and cheaper than a pure platinum one. It also needs to work for a long time — say, the life of a car. So far, the preliminary results look promising, but longer-term testing is needed before this kind of fuel cells can be used to power your car."
Submission: A new way to make water -- and fuel cells by rpiquepa (644694)
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  • Alcohol into water? (Score:5, Funny)

    by doyoulikeworms (1094003) on Saturday November 03 2007, @03:50PM (#21226133)
    Shouldn't it be the other way around?

  • [OT] Grammar nitpick (Score:5, Funny)

    by noidentity (188756) on Saturday November 03 2007, @03:51PM (#21226141)

    But be warned: don't read the technical paper itself. It could win an obfuscated contest -- if such a contest existed for scientific papers.


    An obfuscated contest or a contest for obfuscation? The fomer would be difficult to figure out, while the latter would reward entries that are difficult to figure out.

    • Reading the post, I already felt thoroughly obfusced. Reminds me of the timy my fsck obfsck'd by hard drive and it all turned to water.

  • Pet Peeve: UIUC (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286) on Saturday November 03 2007, @03:55PM (#21226167) Journal
    No one in the state calls it UIUC, except for University of Illinois at Chicago students and alumni who get upset when you call it U of I. Every one else just calls it Illinois. It confuses everyone else when its referred to as UIUC.

    • Re:Pet Peeve: UIUC (Score:5, Informative)

      by djcapelis (587616) on Saturday November 03 2007, @04:09PM (#21226257) Homepage
      Actually "everyone else" might just be defined to be people who aren't in your state... last I checked there were more people not from Illinois than those from Illinois. (And if you have to pick a segment to confuse, I'd think you'd want to pick the ones who are near the place and can probably figure it out.)

      Good to know either way, but whether you like it or not, the majority of folks know it best as UIUC. Sorry that you're so well known and all. :)

      Also, if they don't want to be known as UIUC, perhaps a change of domain name is in order...
      • Ah, I see they have both domains...

        It's almost like its got two names each of which might be equally acceptable for use!
  • How valid is their conclusion? Is there an expert here on Slashdot that can offer some insight, because this does sound like a huge discovery.

    • Well, here's an actual link to the paper if someone wants to actually read it: Homogeneous Catalytic Reduction of Dioxygen Using Transfer Hydrogenation Catalysts [acs.org]. Unfortunately, they don't let anyone read more than the abstract without an account or paying $25.

      I'm a little offended by the suggestion not to read the paper because it's too confusing. But then, it's not like we can read it anyways without jumping through a bunch of hoops and paying unreasonable sums of money.

      • I thought I read in the article that the study was funded by the US Department of Energy. Since which is a public research project funded by the US government at a state university kept under a $25 key? I thought the usual stipulation of government grants for research at universities like this, that the results be made freely available to the public. That's why we're paying for them.

        Where this some small corporation I might be tempted to scream hoax or fraud when you made a broad claim, try to dissuade p
    • It appears that Roland has just seen some stuff about chemistry that he finds very exciting but doesn't understand well enough to explain, similar to the articles on materials and thermodynamics of his that have been linked to here with sometimes spectacular conclusions that are unfortunatly wrong. A lot of reactions with hydrocarbons and oxygen result in some water.

      Lets' all chip in an get Roland and Zonk some second hand textbooks so they can write about the spectacular stuff as it is without inflating i

  • sigh (Score:5, Informative)

    by wizardforce (1005805) on Saturday November 03 2007, @04:09PM (#21226263) Journal
    The reaction rate of oxidizing hydrogen or even many alcohols isn't a problem with the catalysts in current use, the porblem is that the catalysts are based on platinum, rhodium etc.. which are extremely expensive. The catalyst in this case is based on Iridium which is also very expensive, if not more so than Platinum. Lcohols are not an unusual starting material for making water and giving off large amounts of energy in an oxidation reaction. Methanol for example, in contact with Platinum in air will oxidize to formaldehyde and water releasing enough heat to eventually cause the platinum to glow red. This is in fact used to great effect in certain fire-starting mechanisms.

    • Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by florescent_beige (608235) on Saturday November 03 2007, @04:33PM (#21226439) Journal

      Right, alcohol fuel cells [fctec.com] already exist.

      My reading of the blurb leads me to think their apparent contribution is finding an iridium based metal hydride that catalyzes both the oxidation and reduction sides, which I never thought about and didn't know platinum couldn't do. Your example above leads me to think it can so I'm wondering what this is really all about.

      Also we have a new reason not to RTFA. The summary forbids us from doing so.
    • So basically they found a new expensive catalyst to turn a product (alcohol) that is energetically costly to make and that consumes quite a bit of water, back into water and energy. Presumably with some non negligible loss of both energy and water in the process.

      Is this supposed to be some kind of exciting news ?

      Or maybe it is of interest to chemists because it's some sort of exotic catalytic reaction ?

      • Or maybe it is of interest to chemists because it's some sort of exotic catalytic reaction ?
        we have a winner. There are better energy solutions than using alcohols [which are usually made at the expense of food production]. Food that otherwise could have fed millions of people and saved many lives.
        • . . . or it could've rotted in the fields because it was no longer economically feasible to harvest or transport the food to the millions of hungry mouths. Food production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels which are just stored biomass. The more expensive it gets to extract and refine fossil fuels, the more attractive using "fresh" biomass for fuels becomes. We just need to produce more biomass than our machines and bodies consume.

  • WTF (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2007, @04:11PM (#21226273)
    Er... Water is pretty much the side product of almost any reaction. For example, you may have heard that ethanol burns relatively cleanly. Translation: Ethanol -> Carbon dioxide + Water
    This has almost never not been known.
      • "An "unusual starting substance" would be something like pure boron."

        My god man, I read that as "pure bacon," and was filled with a rush of visions of a glorious future, in which water was no longer pumped from the ground, but instantly created as a byproduct of the pork industry.

        Maybe I've had too much Super Bull Red Glue...

  • Free Energy (Score:4, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Saturday November 03 2007, @04:39PM (#21226473) Homepage Journal
    All these chemicals are just storage media for energy released by the fuel cells. Where is all that alcohol supposed to come from, Russia's motherlode of vodka wells?

    Making the alcohol consumes the very energy released by the fuel cells along with water. If the alcohol is fermented vegetation, that bacterial process consumes some of the energy to process the higher-energy sugars and carbohydrates in the vegetation. The vegetation is the key, because it converts the actual source of energy, sunlight, into those sugars. But by the time the alcohol hits the fuel cell, already over 95% of the sun's energy is lost in other processes before the final 50-80% max efficiency is applied to the usable 5%.

  • Sign of the End Times (Score:3, Funny)

    by NotQuiteReal (608241) on Saturday November 03 2007, @06:09PM (#21227101) Journal
    Water into Wine - that's a miracle.

    Wine into water - that's the work of a beast!

    • I've had the ability to turn wine (and other alcohol based beverages) into water for quite some time. Well... a water-like substance anyway.

  • As states the UIUC report, 'not only can they make water from unlikely starting materials, such as alcohols,

    Okay, I can understand water into wine, but the other way around?

  • First off, thank you to James E. Kloeppel, the author of the press release, for giving credit to the grad student and identifying him as the lead author. Second, I have no idea where water is formally known as dihydrogen monoxide. Hopefully, that was a joke. When I go to see the queen, I will be sure to address it by the proper name. Go Illini! It sounds like the entire press release could be summed up in one sentence. They developed a new iridium catalyst that helps electrochemically reduce oxygen in fuel
  • This is about "generating power in a fuel cell".

    Poor Zachariah Heiden made some comment that included the partial sentence "unconventional metal hydrides can be used for a chemical process called oxygen reduction, which is an essential part of the process of making water", and all the context got thrown away.

    The actual paper seems to be "Homogeneous Catalytic Reduction of Dioxygen Using Transfer [acs.org]
    Hydrogenation Catalysts".

    • There is a lot of hydrogen in hydrocarbons as well as carbon. So you generally get water when you burn them, and it's possible that some methods of burning them wouldn't create CO2 either.

      For example, it might be energetically favorable to release all the hydrogen from hydrocarbons, combine it with oxygen and leave the remaining carbon in the form of graphite or maybe even carbon nanotubes.

      If I knew more chemistry I could do the math and find out if this was true.

      • The title of this news release certainly wins a prize in the "yeah, so?" category-- lots of starting materials make water, including, among other things, gasoline-- a significant component of your car exhaust is water vapor.

        It's easy enough to release the hydrogen from hydrocarbons and burn it (to get water), leaving carbon behind-- that's essentially a description of pyrolisis. Or, if you like, it's a description of how to make charcoal.

    • I thought humans had proved this one a long time ago, at the first kegger.

    • This makes sense. In a normal person, alcohol is broken down into water and sugar inside the body.

      InnerWeb

    • I can name three ways to make water out of alcohol off the top of my head:

      (1) Set fire to it.

      (2) Pump it into your gas tank and start your engine.

      (3) Drink some booze and take a leak.

      But considering the amount of energy it takes to make alcohol in the first place, why would you want to get water from such expensive ingredients?

      rj

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bassman2k (409481)

      Making water from alcohol! Alchemists have been trying to transmute one element into another for hundreds of years!
      Neither water nor alcohol are elements.
    • Now if they could turn water into alcohol, the investors would be kicking their door down!
    • This is elementary chemical equation balancing. In 2H2 + O2, You have 4 atoms of hydrogen and 2 atoms of oxygen, and with 2H2O you have 4 atoms of hydrogen and 2 atoms of oxygen. They are the same quantities for all elements involved. The only difference is to what those atoms are bonded, but conservation of matter is maintained.
    • The chemistry notation is apparently confusing you: try this for more normal looking math.

      2(H*2) + (O*2) = 2(H*2 + O)

      Does that make more sense now?
    • Fuel cells are about 70% total efficiency or more. Internal combustion engines are about 20-30%. Bigger co generation plants can get to 50%. At this point fuel cells that can compare to the robustness of normal engines are expensive. The rest are more or less at the research prototype level.

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