Yes, titanium is certainly a remarkable material. Without it, hardly an aeroplane would be flying in the skies these days, and it is interesting (something I wasn't fully aware of) that titanium ore is pretty widely spread around the earth. However, I do know that it's pretty difficult stuff to handle and, like aluminium (also widely spread around the earth), it requires large quantities of energy to get into usable form.
And yes, too, this latest discovery of ion separation at flowing water boundaries is, indeed, of great fascination. It makes me wonder, though, just why we don't bring back old-fashioned water mills. This was one of the great inventions of the so-called Dark Ages. If you go for a country walk round here, you come across evidence of water mills wherever there's running water -- large ones that drove powerful flour and fulling mills, and small ones that were built on little streams hardly a foot or two wide. Of course, when steam power came along, they all fell into disuse but, given modern turbine technology, I can't think it will be too long before some enterprising villages round here (it's a hilly region) don't start returning to water technology. Even the smallest water turbine could keep many houses well-lit and warm.
More specifically, we must wait further investigation of the separation effect with great interest. It certainly seems a go-er. Unlike the cold-fusion farce of some years ago which was, in essence, nothing more than a revival of the perpetual motion myth -- that is, something for nothing -- ion separation seems a practical proposition (and, like most great discoveries, entirely serendipitous -- and obvious when realised!). Much will depend on the practicalities and achievable efficiencies. I'm quite fascinated by your conjunction of this effect with titanium-catalysed solar cells. This could amplify the self-sufficiency of our local villages even more so!
Keith
At 16:03 23/10/2003 -0700, you wrote:
On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Pete,
>
>Thank you for your information regarding the use of Titamium dioxide
>catalysis of solar radiation capture.
>
>What bothers me is that despite large sums being spent on solar cell
>research, the likely conversion-efficiency that will be obtained is still
>likely to be very low (circa 10-20%) compared with biological methods
>(80-90%). Also, the capital costs of producing solar cell technology will
>be very high indeed because it is energy-intensive.
>
>As a former chemist, I am somewhere in the middle between physics and
>biology in judging the respective merits of solar cells and biological
>methods (e.g. bacteria, plants such as sugar cane). As a putative
>evolutionary economist (!), however, the main point of my piece is that
>the initial phase of what I was writing about (the production of hydrogen
>and/or electricity) will be able to be dispersed more more evenly around
>the earth's surface and thus it is highly likely to have big effects on
>the infrastructure of tomorrow's world when fossil fuels become
>exhausted/prohibivitely expensive (in comparison with solar methods).
I don't think I have any quarrel with your assessment of the potential
for fermentation technologies. I'm just fascinated by this newly
emerging field of titanium electrolysis, and the synergy with
hydrogen production. Imagine longlived, rustproof, lightweight
cheap titanium vehicles powered by hydrogen engines (or hydrogen
fuel cell driven electric motors). And talking about widely
geographically dispersed technologies, TiO2 is literally everywhere!
It remains to be seen how critical the form and purity of TiO2
required for all these new processes will be. Who knows what sort of
new processes and economies the burgeoning research in this field
might yield? It is a wide open frontier. Now here's another wild idea
from a new discovery to add to the mix: I guess you might have
seen the news articles this week
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1066645759515_78///?hub=SciTech
about the guys from Alberta who
decided to put conductive coatings on the upper and lower surfaces
of a plate of glass with a massive number of tiny holes through it
(rather similar to the active element in a microchannel plate
electron multiplier) to see if they could observe the long known
but little explored effect of charge separation by fluid flow
along a surface. Somewhat to their surprise, they found, even
with a small water pressure such as one foot of gravity, there
was enough current and voltage generated to light a small
incandescent lamp. Now, imagine using this technology to generate
the 0.3 volt necessary to bias the TiO2 electrode for hydrogen
generation. You now have a technology whereby you drop a large
apparatus into a river, just under the surface, and the combination
of water flow and sunlight generates hydrogen for you virtually
for free. If this sort of thing all pans out, it will be pretty
exciting times...
-Pete Vincent
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
