Water-Driven Micromotors Rocket Around

I saw this and it is quite interesting, it appears they have made micromotors that run on water. This could be useful for biotech at some point.

Over the past several years, bioengineers have built micro- and nanosized rockets that zip through liquids, fueled by chemical reactions between the materials that make up the rockets and their environments. The engineers hope someday these tiny motors could help deliver cargo, such as drugs. Unfortunately, many of these motors require toxic hydrogen peroxide as fuel source, limiting their use in the body. Now researchers have overcome this constraint by developing micromotors that run on water.

The particles, which are 20 µm in diameter, are asymmetric: A chemical reaction on the back side of the particle forms gas bubbles that propel the motor forward. The micromotors harness a well-known reaction between aluminum and water to produce hydrogen gas and aluminum hydroxide.

Read the full article here.

i don't think i want hydrogen gas bubbles
or aluminium hydroxide floating around in me .

I'll just take the tablet !

reply to post by radarloveguy


Unless they use an instant steam catalyst.




Another "disappeared " product...

reply to post by EartOccupant


Oxford Catalysts Group

Not quite a 'disappeared tech', just re-deployed into another application.
Its all about money, I'm sure that mining is more lucrative than hospital cleaning products!

This is pretty off topic but in smaller amounts h2o2 isnt all that toxic. I personally drink some food grade peroxide in a 3-5% solution with water. Works great on hangovers. Or maybe its just peroxide rather than hydrogen peroxide. Im not that knowledgeable on science but a friend of mine is a phd in some sort of chemistry. She gave the stuff to me. Been using it for a year now. I think ill send her a text asking what exactly im drinking lol

After watching the instant steam video i thought i want one of those so after looking about it seams fairly simple to make using this method from wiki en.wikipedia.org...
"Use as a monopropellant takes advantage of the decomposition of 70–98+% concentration hydrogen peroxide into steam and oxygen. The propellant is pumped into a reaction chamber where a catalyst, usually a silver or platinum screen, triggers decomposition, producing steam at over 600 °C (1,112 °F), which is expelled through a nozzle, generating thrust."

so it looks like when it combusts all that comes out is steam and oxygen so it would be totally nontoxic and safe to use even in cooking areas.
Also from the the patent used for drilling with instant steam www.google.co.uk... you can see that the fluid is just 38% hydrogen peroxide and 12% methanol.

but the mixture used by both these examples might be a bit to reactive so this might be why he says on the video that the fluid used is mainly water. I think i`m of to go and buy some H2O2 and methanol to have a play about.