4 ms·

How much gold and palladium are required? Those are massively expensive catalysts and it feels borderline disingenuous to talk about how this will bring clean d

by gundmc 5y ago

How much gold and palladium are required? Those are massively expensive catalysts and it feels borderline disingenuous to talk about how this will bring clean drinking water to the masses without so much as mentioning cost.

TheDudeMan 5y ago
"But your majesty, the people don't have any gold for their water catalysts." "Let them use palladium."
osrec 5y ago
Given that they are catalysts, they're not being depleted in the cleaning process. Thus, they're a fixed one time cost, albeit a potentially high one.
gentleman11 5y ago
> The catalyst-based method was shown to be 10,000,000 times more potent at killing the bacteria than an equivalent amount of the industrial hydrogen peroxide Even if it required a fair bit, 10M is a really big number. Long term savings would be huge since the catalysts aren’t consumed in the reactions
- kapp_in_life 5y ago
  Is hydrogen peroxide "good enough" such that it doesn't matter? Like saying I'm 10 million times less likely to drown watering a lawn than I am washing a car isn't important, because the odds of either happening is vanishingly small.
  - pitaj 5y ago
    The point is that you can use 1/10,000,000 the H2O2 than you would otherwise for the same amount of sanitation.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      What if I could get equally good sanitation using ZERO h2o2?
- krige 5y ago
  The "equivalent amount" of H2O2 is actually a really pathetic amount (0,01%) and potency is not linear with concentration. Actual concentration of H2O2 that's used for these purposes is only 60 times higher (0,6%) and achieves similar 10^8 times better results as 0,01%. Plus they only tested vs E. Coli which is not very durable as far as nasty microbes in your water go.
nine_k 5y ago
How much platinum and palladium catalytic converters in cars [1] consume? There are at least tens of millions of cars with such converters. Catalysts don't get used up, and metals of platinum group are 100% recycleable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter
- lvs 5y ago
  In the real world, catalysts do in fact get used up, usually due to fouling from side reactions and that kind of thing. That's why you often need to replace a catalytic converter within the lifetime of a vehicle.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    Sometimes it's because someone stole it for the platinum.
wolverine876 5y ago
> How much gold and palladium are required? Probably nobody knows. It's research; it's not a technology or product in development.

by gundmc 5y ago

TheDudeMan 5y ago

"But your majesty, the people don't have any gold for their water catalysts." "Let them use palladium."

osrec 5y ago

Given that they are catalysts, they're not being depleted in the cleaning process. Thus, they're a fixed one time cost, albeit a potentially high one.

gentleman11 5y ago

> The catalyst-based method was shown to be 10,000,000 times more potent at killing the bacteria than an equivalent amount of the industrial hydrogen peroxide Even if it required a fair bit, 10M is a really big number. Long term savings would be huge since the catalysts aren’t consumed in the reactions

kapp_in_life 5y ago
Is hydrogen peroxide "good enough" such that it doesn't matter? Like saying I'm 10 million times less likely to drown watering a lawn than I am washing a car isn't important, because the odds of either happening is vanishingly small.
- pitaj 5y ago
  The point is that you can use 1/10,000,000 the H2O2 than you would otherwise for the same amount of sanitation.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    What if I could get equally good sanitation using ZERO h2o2?
krige 5y ago
The "equivalent amount" of H2O2 is actually a really pathetic amount (0,01%) and potency is not linear with concentration. Actual concentration of H2O2 that's used for these purposes is only 60 times higher (0,6%) and achieves similar 10^8 times better results as 0,01%. Plus they only tested vs E. Coli which is not very durable as far as nasty microbes in your water go.

nine_k 5y ago

How much platinum and palladium catalytic converters in cars [1] consume? There are at least tens of millions of cars with such converters. Catalysts don't get used up, and metals of platinum group are 100% recycleable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

lvs 5y ago
In the real world, catalysts do in fact get used up, usually due to fouling from side reactions and that kind of thing. That's why you often need to replace a catalytic converter within the lifetime of a vehicle.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  Sometimes it's because someone stole it for the platinum.

wolverine876 5y ago

> How much gold and palladium are required? Probably nobody knows. It's research; it's not a technology or product in development.