Science, Art and Global Trade

Part 4 of Hedgerows/ and Hypersonics

Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles will eventually overcome the EV dilemma. The EV dilemma is not range anxiety as commonly misconceived. It is a dependency on foreign (Chinese) production for the lithium hydroxide currently being used in EV batteries, U.S. dependency on Taiwan-made microchips, imports from foreign countries for 35 critical minerals as reported by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior - many used in the production of EVs - and the fact that we are subject to the ultimate dilemma. The ultimate dilemma is that EVs require recharging from 4 to 22 hours overnight to be fully charged. This overnight charging from home will strain the capacity of the electric grid and in populous areas like NY and San Francisco, this strain will cause a break and brownouts will become blackouts.?

Art and the Imagination as Solution?

I have recited the scientific innovations of UNSW Sydney and RMIT in Australia and how they have?dissolved platinum in liquid gallium, splitting the platinum atoms up so that there was more catalytic potential in a smaller amount of platinum. Prior to this, I have also recorded the advances made by several German Universities in developing more useful and economically feasible catalysts for photolysis - the use of Light to separate from water hydrogen and oxygen in order to recombine them in fuel cells to produce clean energy.?

Here are some excerpts.?

German Innovation?

The journal "Nature Communications," reported that researchers from the Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, the Technical University of Munich and Universiteit Leiden found that the efficiency of electrodes can be increased for the purpose of water electrolysis (photolysis).?

The dodecahedron - as depicted in Dali's The Last Supper-at our National Art Gallery:

Presciently depicts the solution to the?widespread adoption of green hydrogen and the fuel-cell as a revolution in energy.?

Typically, platinum is applied as catalyst, in order to accelerate the conversion of water to hydrogen and oxygen. For the reaction to be as efficient as possible, intermediates must not adhere too strongly or too weakly at the catalyst surface.

Traditional electrodes bind intermediates too strongly.

The team headed by Prof Dr Aliaksandr Bandarenka;

from the Department of Physics of Energy Conversion and Storage in Munich and Prof Dr Wolfgang Schuhmann:

from the Center for Electrochemical Sciences in Bochum have calculated how strongly intermediates must adhere to electrodes in order to most efficiently facilitate electrolysis. Their analysis revealed that traditional electrodes made of platinum, rhodium and palladium bind the intermediates a bit too strongly.

The researchers modified the properties of the platinum catalyst surface by applying a layer of copper atoms. With this additional layer, the system generated twice the amount of hydrogen than with a pure platinum electrode. This occurred when the researchers applied the copper layer directly under the top layer of the platinum atoms. The group observed another useful side effect: the copper layer extended the service life of the electrodes, by rendering them more corrosion resistant.

The dodecahedron provides a solution to the widespread adoptionof green hydrogen and the fuel cell as a revolution in energy.

U.S. Innovation?and the Jobs of the Future

Art, Inspiration and?Technological Development?

The collaboration between Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva, led to 1905; the Year of Miracles.?She got a 5 in Applied Physics at G?ttingen, while he got a 1. She was a woman and so her contribution to science was not recognized as she took care of their mentally disabled son. Albert on the other hand, won the Nobel Prize for discovering the Photon.

Collaboration between American and German laboratories will lead to another year of miracles.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have jointly developed a new type of fuel cell catalyst. One of the main barriers to widespread Fuel Cell adoption as ubiquitous provider of energy is the high cost of fuel cell catalysts, of platinum.?

The U.S. Energy Department estimates that platinum can account for 50% of a fuel cell's cost. Luckily, the new class of catalysts being developed by Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley involves the dodecahedon, a three-dimensional, 12-sided, hollow structure which is a thousand times smaller in diameter than a human hair.

From Polyhedra to Dodecahedron

Fuel cell catalyst researchers now conventionally use polyhedra, or small, solid nanoparticles of pure platinum;

Researchers created a hollow frame of the original polyhedron so, instead of a solid particle of pure platinum, what's left is just a frame with platinum-rich edges, greatly reducing the amount of platinum needed. Doing this makes the catalyst more efficient because the surface area is increased, and the catalyzed molecules can contact the structure from more directions. This has more than 30 times the catalytic activity than conventional catalysts?and uses 85% less platinum.

Art, Science and Jobs

When asked what jobs will be performed in the future as the world becomes increasingly automated, Mme. Christine Lagarde, then head of the IMF, explained that the gurus she had consulted on this question told her that they thought that most of the jobs that would be performed in the future had not yet been created. When the Japanese asked her how they could awaken their economy from its decade of deep sleep, she could have responded with a line taken from Mao Tse Tung; “Women hold up half the sky.”

Inspired discoveries will lead to the more effective photolysis of water and the mass, commercial production of green hydrogen- just as the collaboration among the differing cultures of Feynman, Bohr, Groves and Einstein, led to the development of the atomic bomb, the Dark side of Light -and the end of WWII.?

Culture eats strategy for breakfast - Peter Drucker?

As do Love and Light - Laraque

Continued