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from the getting-H2O2-out-of-thin-air^W-water dept.
Water is everywhere on Earth, but maybe that just gives it more space to hide its secrets. Its latest surprise, Stanford researchers report Aug. 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that microscopic droplets of water spontaneously produce hydrogen peroxide.
The discovery could pave the way for greener ways to produce the molecule, a common bleaching agent and disinfectant, said Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a professor of chemistry in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences.
"Water is one of the most commonly found materials, and it's been studied for years and years and you would think that there was nothing more to learn about this molecule. But here's yet another surprise," said Zare, who is also a member of Stanford Bio-X.
The discovery was made serendipitously while Zare and his lab were studying a new, more efficient way to create gold nanostructures in tiny water droplets known as microdroplets. To make those structures, the team added an additional molecule called a reducing agent. As a control test, Zare suggested seeing if they could create gold nanostructures without the reducing agent. Theoretically that should have been impossible, but it worked anyway—hinting at an as yet undiscovered feature of microdroplet chemistry.
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-chemists-microdroplets-spontaneously-hydrogen-peroxide.html
First astrology and now homeopathy are starting to make sense after all.
Jae Kyoo Lee el al., "Spontaneous generation of hydrogen peroxide from aqueous microdroplets", PNAS (2019). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911883116
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @07:00AM (5 children)
TFAbstract [pnas.org]
Essentially, they are saying that, in small water droplets, free OH- radicals (which are reducing agents) are observable at higher call concentration than in bulk water, that those radicals lose easier their electron and recombine in pairs to form hydrogen peroxide.
I'm curious if someone manages to reproduce the experiment. 'Cause one of the consequences would be that splitting water and obtaining hydrogen is possible by atomizing water. I doubt it happens simply because of the size of water droplets, as fog/clouds have sizes in the range reported by TFA [uwyo.edu]. No matter the low concentration, over.hundred of millions of years of raining, a significant proportion of water would be lost by the loss of hydrogen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @07:56AM (1 child)
The following is in equilibruim normally, which defines the pH of water (negative logarithm of the H3O+ concentration).
So, the interesting part is going from HO- to H2O2 without a catalyst and preventing reacting back to water with the acid.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @08:59AM
There something interesting in the phys.org FA too:
Which suggest that somehow the system evolved in a state of higher energy. The only explanation I can imagine: a higher energy metastable state that was reached by the atomization process; perhaps a charge separation between droplets and the gas used in atomization too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @10:35AM (2 children)
But did they change the spray gas to pure N2? For "strange stuff" like this wouldn't testing with pure nitrogen be the correct way to prove that the H2O2 is generated without help from O2 in air?
Being thorough and eliminating most of the O2 dissolved in the water is a bit harder but I don't think it's impossible.
But I suppose this sort of stuff is for the next publication? The joys of "publish or perish" driven "science"... ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:19PM (1 child)
Or..... genuine science. Where one person or group uses one's thinker as best as one can, one notices an anomaly, one comes up with a null hypothesis, one does one's best to eliminate confounding variables but in the end design the best experiment one can, have at the experiment, record the results, then test to see if the null hypothesis is sustained. And then most importantly: One places one's results in public view and invites both criticism and makes it possible for others to follow well enough to test themselves to confirm or deny what the truth is for themselves.
If I get what they did - they always used a reagent to get their results, they removed that reagent and still got results, they came up with a how it might be possible and devised a test to confirm if H2O2 was being produced by something other than their reagent and it is. I may be reading that wrong, but there one is. The PNAS abstract quoted above says, "Water molecules are spontaneously oxidized to form hydrogen peroxide near the water−air interface of micron-sized water droplets. This process does not require any chemical reagent, catalyst, applied electric potential, or radiation. Only pure water in the form of microdroplets in air is necessary for the appearance of hydrogen peroxide." Although the phys.org article on phys.org says they were using strong electric fields in the vicinity and that could be the reason (which is different from an applied electrical potential... I suppose?????) Don't have time to determine if phys.org is summarizing it wrong or if there's a house of cards here or what.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:26PM
Once you are coming up with a "null hypothesis" you are pretty much fucked. People doing science come up with "their hypothesis", not a "null hypothesis". Einstein (actually whoever was running those experiments) didn't check whether the apparent position of the stars moved exactly 0 degrees from expected during an eclipse. He checked whether they appeared to move the amount his theory predicted.