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Chemists develop new way to split water

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Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#21

Post by Aachen »

dylan604 wrote: post #18
Filligree wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where do you find 550g lighters? Surely a pocket lighter to save half a kilogram of water is worth it

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#22

Post by [deleted] »

Filligree wrote: post #16
dylan604 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;-)

[deleted]

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#23

Post by dylan604 »

Aachen wrote: post #21
dylan604 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where do you find 550g lighters? Surely a pocket lighter to save half a kilogram of water is worth it

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

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#24

Post by earthboundkid »

fakedang wrote: post #19
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #7

Couple of quotes from the OP: "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. Armid…

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 h…

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. :-)

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#25

Post by nashashmi »

mcpackieh wrote: post #2

I guess we can now look forward to a new wave of scams promising to break the laws of thermodynamics to get free energy from water.

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.

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#27

Post by marcosdumay »

dylan604 wrote: post #23
Aachen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you find 550g lighters? Surely a pocket lighter to save half a kilogram of water is worth it

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

> pressurize it

You "just" have to capture and cool it down.

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).

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#28

Post by [deleted] »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #7

Couple of quotes from the OP: "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. Armid…

[deleted]

Re: Chemists develop new way to split water

#30

Post by amluto »

earthboundkid wrote: post #24
fakedang wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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 sou…

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.

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