Science Daily is documenting that Zhiyu Hu and associates, researchers at ORNL has developed a method for binding platinum nanoparticles to glass wool fibers that will enable a nano-catalytic reaction (aren't *all* catalytic reactions "nano-" by definition?) to allow self-combustion of methanol at temperatures ranging from room temperature to 600 deg. C. Ed. Note: The efficiency of fuel cells (or nano-catalytic fuel cells?) at various temperatures is tricky. See for example Thermodynamic Efficiency of Methane, Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide. But there may be advantages, particularly in devices such as laptops, for being able to extract chemical energy at low temperatures and thus avoid potential problems associated with high temperature fuel cells. If they could get the nano-catalytic process to work on ethanol as well as methanol you might be able to power your laptop using the beverages served on long plane flights.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 at 1:00 PM and is filed under Articles, Nanoscale Bulk Technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.