• Question: could you tell me some of the equations for the reactions that you make happen?

    Asked by barney14 to Stuart on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Stuart Archer

      Stuart Archer answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      Hi Barney,

      A lot of reactions we do are pretty complicated and use a lot of chemicals and chemistry that you just can’t cover in school. Most of the things we make are made up of a series of as many as 20 reactions!

      We usually start by reacting a platinum compound with a chemical called ‘Dimethyl sulfoxide’ – DMSO for short

      This makes it easier to attach other chemicals to the platinum atom in later steps. I can’t work out how to do subscript numbers on this reply, so I hope this makes sense:

      K2PtCl4 + 2 DMSO ———> Pt(DMSO)2Cl2 + 2 KCl

      Ultimately, we’re trying to create hydrogen from water. The reaction for this is a bit more straightforward:

      2H2O ———> 2H2 + O2

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