> That is what makes the finding so striking. Manganese is usually not viewed as a friend of stainless steel corrosion resistance. In fact, the prevailing view has been that manganese weakens it.
> "Initially, we did not believe it because the prevailing view is that Mn impairs the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science. However, when numerous atomic-level results were presented, we were convinced. Beyond being surprised, we cannot wait to exploit the mechanism," said Dr. Kaiping Yu, the first author of the article, whose PhD is supervised by Professor Huang.
So apart from the clickbait, the reason why this is interesting is because it's a limiter for the often cited idea of clean green hydrogen from electrolyis. The current use of titanium and precious metals is, obviously, really expensive, so it's uneconomical to build something that only runs on "spare" electricity.
I don't think the efficiency or longevity of electrolysis equipment is the limiting factor...
The limiting factor is that natural gas is very cheap and cracking it to make blue hydrogen is really easy at scale, and gives off CO2 which is useful for injection into wells to increase production. That sets a price ceiling of hydrogen.
At the other end of the scale, there are batteries to store 'free' electricity and resell later. That sets a floor price of electricity.
Between the floor price of the input and ceiling price of the output, there is no room for electrolysis, even at 100% efficiency, unless government policies mandate it or restrict batteries or blue hydrogen.
Galvanic corrosion typically happens at 0.5V (and as low as 0.15V in salt-water); 1.7V is "ultra high potential" in comparison with normal corrosion thresholds.
I think that may not be the potential used for electrolysis, but the chemical potential of the saltwater-metal boundary. But hopefully someone more knowledgeable will comment.
this kind of headline is bad for our collective souls; I know raging against the clickbait is old hat but seriously, this is ridiculous. Materials science is surely interesting enough to a reader of science direct without being SHOCKED and APPALLED all the time
> That is what makes the finding so striking. Manganese is usually not viewed as a friend of stainless steel corrosion resistance. In fact, the prevailing view has been that manganese weakens it.
> "Initially, we did not believe it because the prevailing view is that Mn impairs the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science. However, when numerous atomic-level results were presented, we were convinced. Beyond being surprised, we cannot wait to exploit the mechanism," said Dr. Kaiping Yu, the first author of the article, whose PhD is supervised by Professor Huang.
This is the Cannot be explained bit
So apart from the clickbait, the reason why this is interesting is because it's a limiter for the often cited idea of clean green hydrogen from electrolyis. The current use of titanium and precious metals is, obviously, really expensive, so it's uneconomical to build something that only runs on "spare" electricity.
I don't think the efficiency or longevity of electrolysis equipment is the limiting factor...
The limiting factor is that natural gas is very cheap and cracking it to make blue hydrogen is really easy at scale, and gives off CO2 which is useful for injection into wells to increase production. That sets a price ceiling of hydrogen.
At the other end of the scale, there are batteries to store 'free' electricity and resell later. That sets a floor price of electricity.
Between the floor price of the input and ceiling price of the output, there is no room for electrolysis, even at 100% efficiency, unless government policies mandate it or restrict batteries or blue hydrogen.
You just know that engineers and management in Toyota's delusional hydrogen division are salivating.
> This second shield helps protect the steel in chloride containing environments up to an ultra high potential of 1700 mV.
Uh, dumb question, how is 1.7 volts "ultra high potential" ? Is that even enough to do electrolysis like they're talking about?
Galvanic corrosion typically happens at 0.5V (and as low as 0.15V in salt-water); 1.7V is "ultra high potential" in comparison with normal corrosion thresholds.
I think that may not be the potential used for electrolysis, but the chemical potential of the saltwater-metal boundary. But hopefully someone more knowledgeable will comment.
this kind of headline is bad for our collective souls; I know raging against the clickbait is old hat but seriously, this is ridiculous. Materials science is surely interesting enough to a reader of science direct without being SHOCKED and APPALLED all the time
@dang maybe we could have the title changed to something like
"Hong Kong researchers develop corrosion-resistant steel for seawater hydrogen electrolysis"
Thanks! That's too long (limit is 80 chars) but I came up with something that fits. Feel free to suggest something better.
I think the seawater bit is really relevant here. Only understood the importance of this when I saw the seawater part.
OK, how about that?
I'd click on that