Tuesday, June 8, 2021

New process promises to make oodles of hydrogen and lithium



A reading of the link provided shows one possible problem. One of the materials needed is ruthenium, which is itself quite rare.

If you need a lot of ruthenium, then this process is a non-starter.

By the way, it seems that ruthenium was part of an electrolysis experiment over at JPL. The experiment electrolyzed methanol, if memory serves. That electrolysis experiment found that a lot less energy was required to electrolyze methanol than water in order to produce the same amount of hydrogen.

Whatever happened to that experiment? If ruthenium was the problem there, it might well be the problem here in this new experiment.

Is it possible to synthesize ruthenium? Doubtful. A search of the decay chain for Ruthenium 106 shows a decay to stable Palladium 106 after a couple months. Ruthenium 106 itself is a nuclear byproduct of uranium fission.

Mining asteroids could get some. Put Elon Musk to work on it. Ruthenium is a byproduct of the mining of platinum, and there are asteroids with plenty of that stuff.

It could be possible to make this work, but conditions being as they are, there are a few things that may work against it.





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