News tagged with hydrogen gas

There's more star-stuff out there but it's not dark matter

(Phys.org) -- More atomic hydrogen gas — the ultimate fuel for stars — is lurking in today's Universe than we thought, CSIRO astronomer Dr. Robert Braun has found.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 30, 2012 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (10) | comments 15 | with audio podcast

Nanosheet catalyst discovered to sustainably split hydrogen from water

(Phys.org) -- Hydrogen gas offers one of the most promising sustainable energy alternatives to limited fossil fuels. But traditional methods of producing pure hydrogen face significant challenges in unlocking ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created May 10, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (15) | comments 57 | with audio podcast

Nanotrees harvest the sun's energy to turn water into hydrogen fuel

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of California, San Diego electrical engineers are building a forest of tiny nanowire trees in order to cleanly capture solar energy without using fossil fuels and harvest it for ...

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Mar 07, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (21) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Hydrogen from acidic water: Researchers develop potential low cost alternative to platinum for splitting water

A technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the widely used industrial catalyst molybdenite has been developed by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (20) | comments 22 | with audio podcast

New catalyst for safe, reversible hydrogen storage

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have developed a new catalyst that reversibly converts hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide to a liquid under very mild conditions. ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Mar 18, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (15) | comments 34 | with audio podcast

Methane levels 17 times higher in water wells near hydrofracking sites

A study by Duke University researchers has found high levels of leaked methane in well water collected near shale-gas drilling and hydrofracking sites. The scientists collected and analyzed water samples from 68 private ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created May 09, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (12) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Salt Water System Could Generate Hydrogen

(PhysOrg.com) -- The idea of generating hydrogen from salt water has often been claimed to work effectively. However, the systems proposed so far generally require a much greater energy input than the energy ...

Physics / Soft Matter

created Mar 18, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (33) | comments 18 weblog

Theoretical chemists find new dimension to rules for reactions

Theoretical chemists at Emory University have solved an important mystery about the rates of chemical reactions and the so-called Polanyi rules.

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Oct 20, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

NIST hydrogen fuel materials test facility starts delivering data

(Phys.org) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have published their first archival paper based on data from the institute’s new hydrogen test facility. The paper ...

Physics / Condensed Matter

created May 16, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Hubble confirms: galaxies are ultimate recyclers

(PhysOrg.com) -- New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers' understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements. ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 17, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (9) | comments 80 | with audio podcast

Research: Graphene grows better on certain copper crystals

New observations could improve industrial production of high-quality graphene, hastening the era of graphene-based consumer electronics, thanks to University of Illinois engineers.

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Oct 27, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

Saltwater boosts microbial electrolysis cells to cleanly produce hydrogen

A grain of salt or two may be all that microbial electrolysis cells need to produce hydrogen from wastewater or organic byproducts, without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere or using grid electricity, ...

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created Sep 19, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

How wet is water's surface? Some water molecules split the difference between gas and liquid

(PhysOrg.com) -- Air and water meet over most of the earth's surface, but exactly where one ends and the other begins turns out to be a surprisingly subtle question.

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Jun 08, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Inexpensive catalyst that makes hydrogen gas 10 times faster than natural enzyme

Looking to nature for their muse, researchers have used a common protein to guide the design of a material that can make energy-storing hydrogen gas. The synthetic material works 10 times faster than the original ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Aug 11, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (20) | comments 9 | with audio podcast

The great gas hydrate escape

For some time, researchers have explored flammable ice for low-carbon or alternative fuel or as a place to store carbon dioxide. Now, a computer analysis of the ice and gas compound, known as a gas hydrate, ...

Chemistry / Materials Science

created Jan 18, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Hydrogen

Hydrogen (pronounced /ˈhaɪdrədʒən/) is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, nonmetallic, tasteless, highly flammable diatomic gas with the molecular formula H2. With an atomic weight of 1.00794 u, hydrogen is the lightest element.

Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the universe's elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly composed of hydrogen in its plasma state. Elemental hydrogen is relatively rare on Earth. Industrial production is from hydrocarbons such as methane with most being used "captively" at the production site. The two largest uses are in fossil fuel processing (e.g., hydrocracking) and ammonia production mostly for the fertilizer market. Hydrogen may be produced from water by electrolysis at substantially greater cost than production from natural gas.

The most common isotope of hydrogen is protium (name rarely used, symbol H) with a single proton and no neutrons. In ionic compounds it can take a negative charge (an anion known as a hydride and written as H−), or as a positively-charged species H+. The latter cation is written as though composed of a bare proton, but in reality, hydrogen cations in ionic compounds always occur as more complex species. Hydrogen forms compounds with most elements and is present in water and most organic compounds. It plays a particularly important role in acid-base chemistry with many reactions exchanging protons between soluble molecules. As the only neutral atom with an analytic solution to the Schrödinger equation, the study of the energetics and bonding of the hydrogen atom played a key role in the development of quantum mechanics.

Hydrogen is important in metallurgy as it can embrittle many metals, complicating the design of pipelines and storage tanks. Hydrogen is highly soluble in many rare earth and transition metals and is soluble in both nanocrystalline and amorphous metals. Hydrogen solubility in metals is influenced by local distortions or impurities in the crystal lattice.

For more information about Hydrogen, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.