15 In the future, we will all be driving cars. Beyond that, I can’t predict much. Will the cars fly? I doubt it. Will they have smell-o-vision installed in the seats all gangsta style? Hopefully not. Will they be powered by hydrogen? Hmmm… could be. Richard Eisenberg and co. have taken us a step further in the pursuit of hydrogen generating compounds from water. In his recent JACS communication (ASAP) we are presented with a system which, upon irradiation with visible light, produced a steady stream of hydrogen gas.
In a rare example of actually utilizing the graphical abstract to communicate something other than “OMFG I PWND JACS” Eisenberg has communicated, quite brilliantly, how this may work. Light hits the platinum, kicks an electron out of the complex which goes through the TiO and reduces the Pt metal in the TiO/Pt colloid, where the Pt does proton reduction. The whole thing is regeneraged by triethanolamine as a sacraficial electron donor. This system isn’t new, of course. The idea has existed for a while: Chromophore+electron relay+metal catalyst+sacrificial electron donor+proton source= hydrogen gas…. but this one claims to get more bang for the buck by being more robust.
Indeed, the catalyst turns over for, in some cases, 180 hours. The fact that it runs so long is great. Longevity is key… I mean absolute KEY to the success of these systems, but how much hydrogen is it pumping out? Well… that’s not mentioned, so I can assume it’s not a lot. They also use a 200W HgXe lamp, which puts out more than a modest few candles of light. I also assume (and i’m always willing to be wrong here) that means TWO molecules of TEOA are consumed to make one molecule of hydrogen gas. That’s good news if you’re in the triethanolamine business, I guess. I don’t know where we dig up that shit.
So… will we be filling our cars up with Water/Triethanolamine? I dunno. Maybe. Probably not. Either way, brilliant work by the Eisenberg group. There’s Nobel up in them thar hills.
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Haha, Rochester represent.
Rochester has a fine department.
Have you ever calibrated a light meter with a photographic gray card? That is the Rochester sky. As with all Enviro-whiner supplications, NIMBY rules.
My mechanic is a competent fellow but I don’t anticipate him servicing a five billion kilowatt xenon arc lamp in my trunk. Popping thermonukes overhead to illuminate solar cells paving my car’s roof sounds better. A double train of 20 tolerated minorities pulling by car as I snap a whip sounds better still. Will there be mandated emissions controls? MacDonalds goes into the fuel business. One legislative session later…
“California mandates breakthrough propulsion be fed high test Whopper meat not Big Macs.”
You’re a crazy cat Uncle Al. I admit that half the time I’m not sure what you mean, but I gather its political and, erm, cynical.
how do you come up with such ‘constructions’ in your head?i mean seriously…
i’ve heard a lot of about use hydrogen as fuel and the argument that always comes up is that you get less energy out than you put in cause its hard to split the hydrogen back down, is that true?
i would like to see alternative energy, i dunno about where yall live but down here in naptown gas has been as high as 3.35 a gallon, although its back under $3 now (barely) its only because of the threat of an investigation into their corrupt usurious tactics.
this is the same palce that had people charging over $5 a gallon on 9/11 and they were sued for that.
Yes. You obviously put in a shit ton of energy. Powering 200W MgXe lamps is an expensive en devour. But, if you could get it to produce hydrogen by letting it sit out in the sun and allow it to charge a battery for those night drives and cloudy days, then you’ve got a totally renewable energy source.
You have no idea how lucky you are….Under $3.00? In San Francisco the cheapest is $3.35, though the average is porbbaly around $3.50…. Damn
ps i live in indianapolis, my gas should be like a dollar under the coasts
Seriously. $3 a gallon?
Move to the UK and enjoy the superlow price of $6.19 a gallon (converted from £0.87 a litre).
Repeat after me: I love fuel tax!
US$4.54/gallon here (at the optimistic NZ$1.60/L). nothing like living at the bottom of the world
gov’t subsidizes our gas or we’d be paying more like $8/gallon
and for poor people (me) $3.30 a gallon is too much to even make it to work. which is where the price sat for quite a while and is mostly at 2.98 still.
(i mean seriously at about $.12/mile going 60 mph is a mile a minute and that is literally more than i get paid, and has heavily curtailed job searching)
This is really nice work and certainly beat the overhyped “gloom and doom” Hollywood talks of Lewis, Nocera and company.