FYI for the day:
"Ionic liquid improves speed and efficiency of hydrogen-producing catalyst" http://phys.org/news/2012-06-ionic-liquid-efficiency-hydrogen-producing-cata lyst.html "This information will help the researchers build better catalysts, ones that are both fast and efficient, and made with the common metal nickel instead of expensive platinum. The work explores a type of dissolvable nickel-based catalyst." "The researchers mixed the catalyst, the [acidic] ionic liquid, and a drop of water. The catalyst, with the help of the ionic liquid and an electrical current, produced hydrogen molecules, stuffing some of the electrons coming in from the current into the hydrogen's chemical bonds, as expected. As they continued to add more water, they expected the catalyst to speed up briefly then slow down, as the slow catalyst in their previous solvent did. But that's not what they saw. "The catalyst lights up like a rocket when you start adding water," said Roberts. The rate continued to increase as they added more and more water. With the largest amount of water they tested, the catalyst produced up to 53,000 hydrogen molecules per second, almost as fast as their fast and inefficient version. Importantly, the speedy catalyst stayed just as efficient when it was cranking out hydrogen as when it produced the gas more slowly."
