In reply to Roarty, Francis X's message of Wed, 05 May 2010 13:46:45 -0400: Hi Francis, [snip] >http://www.domain-b.com/technology/2010/20100505_discover_inexpensive.html > > >[quote]The molybdenum-oxo complex that Karunadasa, Chang and Long discovered >is a high valence metal with the chemical name of (PY5Me2)Mo-oxo. In their >studies, the research team found that this complex catalyzes the generation of >hydrogen from neutral buffered water or even sea water with a turnover >frequency of 2.4 moles of hydrogen per mole of catalyst per second.[/quote] >What is a turnover rate? If I wanted a specific number of liters per minute >and converted this to moles per minute the ratio they mention >Of 2.4 moles of hydrogen per mole of catalyst doesn't include a time rate.
Clearly it does ...."per second". If you rearrange the wording you get: "2.4 moles of hydrogen per second per mole of catalyst." BTW the most important part of the article is the phrase: "....to further facilitate electrical charge-driven as well as light-driven catalytic processes." IOW the Hydrogen is obtained either through electrolysis or via the action of sunlight directly, which means that the energy still has to come from somewhere. However a further interesting point is that Mo is also a Mills catalyst, which may go some way toward explaining why it is so active in this role. Perhaps if they do careful measurements they will discover that they are getting more Hydrogen produced than can be accounted for by the energy input. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
