Scientists predict green energy revolution after new graphene discoveries

> This strength doesn't easily scale, as evidenced by the fact that graphite (lots of graphene layers) is not 200 times stronger that steel.

This is an even worse explanation of the science. On the level of saying that the strength of steel doesn't scale because I can bend pig iron with my hands.

I agree with your assessment of the materials science articles but in this case I think you missed the 'breakthrough' part.

Graphene allows positively charged hydrogen to pass through it. The thought experiment is you create a vessel with an inner porous core, you wrap it in graphene, and then you apply a vacuum. That device will pull any positively charged hydrogen out of the atmosphere (which frankly isn't much except during thunderstorms)

This behavior with graphene isn't unknown, the first example was noting that graphene made for an exceptional water filter [1].

[1] http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/article/?id=11561

As a tiny fix: Tech review is a separate, non-profit company, but it's owned by MIT -- to the point where the version delivered (freely) to alums has an extra section for alum news. But yes - it's a little breathless about the OMG amazing discovery ... that turns out to not quite make it. :)

"Find a material with novel properties and then search out uses for it". For most industries, this is cart before the horse, but for the Materials Science industry, they have made a living out of it for well over a century. It is the reason why you can buy sandpaper, carwash soap, sticky notes, and bullet-proof vests from the same company (in this example, 3M, but there are dozens of successful Materials Science megacorps).

When you see stuff like this coming out of Academia, it is usually no different than the bajillions of articles out there about some novel new way to fight cancer. Someone found something interesting, and they are trying to sell the IP.

And the fact that hydrogen molecules don't pass through graphene. Only hydrogen ions.

I'm confused too. Is this just bad reporting or am I missing something?

Using air humidity? Say we have 10 grams of water per cubic meter of air (so about 1% of the total air mass), so about 1 gram of hydrogen.

At about 140 kJ/kg, and assuming a 10% reduction efficiency, and 100 watts per square meter solar panel, it should be able to reduce 0,071 grams per second or 260 grams per hour.

Assuming 10% of air moisture can be extracted, the wind passing through the system to keep the water flow would need to be about 0,7 m/s. It's almost always as windy as that.

The rough numbers are frighteningly good.

All we need is the system to be cheap.

Don't graphene oxidate in the presence of hydroxyl ions? Separating hydrogen from water will creating tons of them.