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New Method To Generate Electricity from Water
spaceling writes "The BBC reports reporting on research published in the Institute of Physics Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering of the first new method of generating electricity in over 150 years. Larry Kostiuk and Daniel Kwok 'created a glass block, two centimetres in diameter and three millimetres thick, containing about 400,000 to 500,000 individual channels...[and] generated about 10 volts with a current of around a milliamp. This allowed the team to successfully power a lightbulb.'" This has also been covered all over the place.
So... if these things end up becoming cell phone batteries and what not, where are you going to get the water flow needed to separate the charges?
Shaking the phone or something? That just looks dumb
In the humble opinion of the battery manufacturers
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
If we take one liter (1 kg) of water at a pressure of 30 cm, then the energy contained is 2.94 J, of which 0.12 J will be available as electrical output. By comparison, a 1500 mAh NiMH battery can store 6500 J. The efficiency of the water battery can probably be improved, but let's face it, for small volumes and reasonable pressures, the stored energy density will never be very high.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Also, the electricity isn't generated from the water. It's generated using the kinetic energy of flowing water - just like a turbine or waterwheel, and something needs to produce the kinetic energy in the first place...excuse me while I go and check my cold fusion plant, the room temperature seems a bit low.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I read one of the articles on this and mabey I missed something but where is this energy coming from? If there is no input of energy then how is there an output. Or have they figured out a loop-hole in the law of thermo-dynamics by finaly creating a perpetual motion machine.
do unto others as you would have them do unto you
There are lot of (more or less potential violent) wars over water. Turkey has build waterpowered electricity plants which use so much water that other surrounding countries saw their waterlevels drop. There are more examples besides this one from the Tigris: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/943002.stm
Yes.. I think it's entirely possible to have real wars in the future not to establisch democracy in a country, or to expand the territory of the aggressor but entirely focussed on the water.
Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing"
I guess that means that pi really are squared.
We had plenty of water. If you read the headlines, you'll see that our supply is becoming strained.
And actually, the Arabs do have water. Or had. Iraq is blessed with an abundant supply of water, so much so in fact that some had speculated we did not go there for the oil as much as the water.
Water is going to become increasingly scarce as time goes by. Even power production using it may not be economically feasable... unless, again, you can use sea water.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
True except that Nuclear Reactors don't generate electricity directly - they do so by converting water into steam which powers turbines, and the base technology for that is 150years old or so.
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
BTW, nuclear reactors are not a new way of generating energy that was discovered in the last hundred and fifty years.
Nuclear reactors are just a new(ish) way of heating water.
Spinning turbines with steam to generate electricity is as old as your hat.
No, you can't wash your face in my sig!
This produces a tiny amount of power but it could be ideal for things like TV remotes, wireless mice, garage door controls, etc.
Sure its being hyped a bit there is a lot of potential here.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Heh! I noticed not a lot of RTFA in evidence. The researchers who discovered this stated where the energy comes from.
It's a new method of generating electricity, not a new way of storing energy or an energy source. The energy would have to come from somewhere else, and since the idea is pretty new, I doubt that anyone knows in much detail how (or if) it will work out in practice.
I suppose you could either recharge a normal battery by pumping the handle your handy, portable water-generator for a few minutes, a bit like a baygen radio.
Or, you could store the water under pressure and let it out through the device to get the energy back out.
The article stated that this method is mainly only good at generating small amounts of electric power. This could still be useful for thing like pacemakers, however; I imagine people would rather have one of these powering their pacemakers than have surgery every few years to change batteries.
I wonder -- would it work on blood? The channes are 10um thick; how wide is a red blood cell?
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
As far as I understand it, The glass around the chaneels is charged; for easy let's say it's positively charged. When water with ions (read: salt) is pumped through the tubes the positive ions cannot pass: they are repelled and stay behind, whereas the negative ions can move freely through the tube and out the other end. Entrance is positive, exit is negative, hence the potential difference and current can be extracted. The energy comes from the pumping power and is converted to electrical power. I just don't see how you can keep water pressurised for months while the floodgates (tubes) are open, because that's what you'll have to do if you want to make it into a battery...
All in all it's not as intricate as the BBC makes it out to be...
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Iraq is blessed with an abundant supply of water, so much so in fact that some had speculated we did not go there for the oil as much as the water.
Who in hell speculated we went to Iraq for their water??
The Fremen High Council?
Are the Bene Gesserit speculating we went there for the Spice or the Sandworms too?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
See, for instance, http://www.amasci.com/emotor/kelvin.html
Which operates under a very similar principle, but with macrochannels. I built one of these when I was a kid, thirty-some years ago. It is so damn cool, your tongue sticks to it!
You make a very important point. Heck, look at how we fight over water in the US. We don't generally have "shootin' wars" over it anymore, but there's certainly a lot of acrimony. The various states arguing over how much water they can keep behind the dams and how much they can take out for irrigation on the Colorado river, for example. The California aqueduct taking most of the water in the Owens valley area and piping it down to Los Angeles caused a fair amount of strife too. I was driving around northern Nevada once about 10 years ago and I saw signs in store windows that said "Don't let Las Vegas take our water". Access to fresh water has been a central issue to civilization for eons. Heck, the first thing those monkey dudes in the beginning of "2001: A Space Oddessey" did after seeing the monolith and "gettin' wise" was grab bludgeons and chase off those other monkey dudes from the watering hole. Just a movie, but it makes an important point.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
So it seems like there must have been a few new technologies for generating electricity in the last 150 years. Many people mentioned that nuclear power plants use steam driven turbines, an old method of producing electricity; however, I have read about some that heat a conducting liquid and then the energy is converted into electricity using magnets and the Lorentz force. This must be fairly new, since it probably couldn't even have been understood until the mid to late 17th century. I've certainly never really heard of people using this sort of method until more recently.
Also, what about photovoltaics and like technologies in solar cells. Clearly, those must have been around since before 1905 (when Einstein explained the effect); however, I'd guess they are newer than 150 years old.
What about fuel cells? Getting energy from converting oxygen and hydrogen into water (or a similar reaction with methenol or whatever) is not a new concept, but using a membrain to harness the electrical energy seems to be a fairly new idea. Unless you don't consider it to be different from a battery.
I'm not sure the claim is false, but it seems quite dubious.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Why not put a couple pumps (no pun intended) in the soles of shoes? As I walk around I could generate the power I need to recharge my phone/low power laptop.
Hey, maybe it would force me to exercise more.
*ring ring*
ME: Hey... Bob... what's... up....[huff puff]
BOB: Dude, why are you outta breath?
ME: Phone... dying... needed... recharge...[cough]
Kids wanna play thier Gameboy... make 'em walk the dog! (hmm, mini paw sized pumps)
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
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10% "But you still need pressure!" redundant observation.
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It just goes to show; smart Slashdotters sleep in.
-FL
Correct. Discovery of the photoelectric effect is credited to Hertz in 1887, so it's less than 120 years old even if you use that discovery, rather than Einstein's explaining how it works.
I read the actual paper, (available, with registration required, here), and granted, these guys did a good job on the analysis and experimental verfication, and also should be commended for bringing attention to this phonemena, but the basis for their work has been know for quite some time. In the field of geophysics, it has long been known that "spontaneous potential" exists due to the flow of water through sermipermable layers of rock and clay. A bibliography on spontaneous potential in boreholes has been compiled by the USGS with some papers dating back to the 1940's.
The real questions are how practical and economically viable this approach will be for medium to large-scale power generation. For natural sites (e.g. permeable rock layers), what type of electrodes can be used, how well will they resist corrosion, and how large must they be? The bottom line: how much will the power cost over the entire life cycle in terms of $ per KWH?
For manufactured microchannel membranes or devices, added questions are the cost of manufacture and the lifespan of the device. How easily will the pores become clogged, what steps must be taken to prevent this, how long will it take for the pores to erode over time, and what is the expected lifetime of the microchannel device?
One big difference between pure science and engineering is that engineers need to factor in economics.
I began recently to work on high frequency eletrolyse and magnetic electrolyse which hase a much better efficacy.
t m
The Energie Problem is solved decades befor, but open your eys - Nobody can sell it without risking his life.
For example:
http://www.cheniere.org/books/excalibur/moray.h
From "FUEL FROM WATER, Energy Independence with Hydrogen" Author Michael A.Peavey Publisher Merit, Inc., P.O. Box 694 Louisville, KY 40205 Library of Congress Number 88-188956 ISBN 0-945516-04-5 Page 22.
" The smallest amount of energy needed to electrolyse one mole of water is 65.3 Wh at 25 degrees Celcius (77 degress F). When the Hydrogen and Oxygen are recombined into water during combustion 79.3 Wh of energy is released. 14 Wh more energy is released in burning Hydrogen and Oxygen than is required to split water. This excess must be absorbed from the surrounding media(environment) in the form of heat during electolysis." [...] "At 25 degrees celcius, for voltages of 1.23 to 1.47 V, the electrolysis reaction ABSORBS HEAT. At over 1.47 V at 25 degrees celcius, the reaction gives off heat."
kindly regards daniel
Could a gas,like steam work as well?
What about superheated air?
This could be a replacement for turbins.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
More and more public restrooms have those infrared detectors to flush toilets and run the faucets. I bet they all have batteries in them. Batteries run down, disposal of them is an environmental problem, etc.
If this gizmo provides enough power to run the detector and the valve, it may be a perfect application. You already have water running through the device.