Why does water flow so well in nanotubes

Nano Tech reports on the analysisi of water in nanot tubes by Caltech Researchers

The water molecules are disconnected from each other in the tube and their flow is ruled by the number of ordered states.

Now, using a novel method to calculate the dynamics of water molecules, Caltech researchers believe they have solved the mystery. It turns out that entropy, a measurement of disorder, has been the missing key.

"It's a pretty surprising result," says William Goddard, the Charles and Mary Ferkel Professor of Chemistry, Materials Science, and Applied Physics at Caltech and director of the Materials and Process Simulation Center. "People normally focus on energy in this problem, not entropy."

Here is more from some research in Houston More:

But water molecules can be confined in other ways too. And when that happens, the electronic structure of liquid water becomes a connected network.

That raises an important question: how does the behaviour of molecules in this electronic network differ from the behaviour of molecules in bulk water interacting in an ordinary way?

Reiter and co say they have measured the properties of confined in the tiny space inside carbon nanotubes at room temperature and found some important differences. They've done this by filling nanotubes with water and bombarding them with an intense beam of neutrons at the Rutherford Appleton Lab in the UK. The way the neutrons scatter reveals the momentum of the protons inside the nanotubes.

They conclude:

Reiter and co also say that this quantum water can only exist when it is surrounded by neutral molecules such as the carbon in nanotubes and not in the presence of many commonly studied materials, such as proton exchange membranes like Nafion. This is made of molecules that conduct protons in an entirely different way and so prevents the formation of quantum water.

The implication, of course, is that the proton exchange membranes used in everything from chemical production to fuel cells could be dramatically improved by using a neutral carbon-based material.

What's the point here?
Working within stable nanotubes, molecules in the tubes are isolated from too much entanglement with the tubes, yet confined to prevent self entanglement. Hence, water and other molecules can be treated at the quantum levle, not the statistical mechanical level. Hence optimal flow in nanotube complexes can be designed to higher efficiencies, as in reliable 20% solar efficiencty when activated. This stuff is a big deal.