Instant water cleaning method ‘millions of times’ better: study
Oh dear. After reading the notes in the study itself about the scale this was done at, scaling up might be an issue:<p>&gt; A typical H₂O₂ synthesis reaction was carried out using 120 mg of 1% AuPd&#x2F;TiO₂ [...] The reactor system was then pressurized, typically to 10 bar. The reactor was then cooled by a water bath to 2 °C. When the reactor had reached the required pressure and the flow through the system had stabilized, the solvent (H²O, HPLC grade), typically at a flow of 0.2 ml min¯¹, was introduced into the system.<p>Oh hey, 0.2 mL&#x2F;min of water. In Virginia, the lowest flow cutoff for waterworks is 0.5 MGD (or 5000 people), the border between Class 3 and Class 4. That flow rate is <i>6.5 million</i> times that done in the tests here. The large water treatment plant I worked at is another 400 times that, and there are plants that would be another 5 or 6 times that. So the necessary scaling factor is going to be measured in the billions.<p>So what about those reagants? This uses about 0.6 mg of gold to process 0.2 mL&#x2F;min of water (if I&#x27;m reading the notation of 1% AuPd&#x2F;TiO₂ correctly). Scale that to our small plant, and that&#x27;s about $225,000 of gold and $350,000 of palladium. Go to the scale I worked at, and that&#x27;s $190 million of catalyst in terms of raw metal worth alone. That&#x27;s comparable to the cost of a regular treatment plant of that scale--<i>just</i> on the catalyst. This assumes that there&#x27;s a neat linear scaling, which I doubt is going to be the case (square-cube law!).