Hydrogen peroxide forms spontaneously in water (bulk, film, or microdroplet) via reduction of dissolved oxygen at solid-water interface

2024/05/09 by Eatoo, Muzzamil Ahmad, Mishra, Himanshu
#Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.10971

Abstract

Zare and co-workers have recently claimed that hydrogen peroxide is spontaneously generated on the air-water interface of sprayed microdroplets, i.e., that H2O2 forms without an external energy source or co-reactant or catalyst. Specifically, they find that the H2O2(aq) concentration in sprayed microdroplets increases by a factor of 3.5 (or 2.5) as the spray chamber's relative humidity (RH) is changed from 15% to 50% (or from 15% to 95%). Building on these results, they imply causation for the seasonality of viral infections arising from the RH-dependent H2O2 generation in environmental microdroplets. Here, we present an alternative explanation for their observations.

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