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MIT Produces Electricity Using Thermopower Waves
MikeChino writes "MIT scientists have discovered a never-before-known phenomenon wherein carbon nanotubes can be used to harness energy from 'thermopower waves.' To do this they coated the nanotubes with a reactive fuel and then lit one end, causing a fast-moving thermal wave to speed down the length of the tube. The heat from the fuel rises to a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, and can speed along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heat also pushes electrons down the tube, which creates a substantial electrical current. The system can output energy (in proportion to its weight) about 100x greater than an equivalent weight lithium-ion battery, and according to MIT the discovery 'opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare.'"
3000 K? What about cooling? Refueling? 100x seems... optimistic.
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Images of Wile E. Coyote sitting on a nano-tube rocket trying to light a fuse are taking over my mind's eye.
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Instead of having a Lion battery that explodes we now have a deliberately exploding battery.
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is this gonna put Bloom Energy out of business?
Yes and it's going to start a whole new era of Boom Energy
The heat from the fuel rises to a temperature of 3,000 kelvins
Since it presumably didn’t start at absolute zero, wouldn’t it have made more sense just to give the temperature in degrees Celsius?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This sounds like a niche energy product. Basically nano-combustion that very quickly creates a very strong electrical charge.
Doesn't sound too great as a battery. But as "ammo" for hand held laser weapons? Could be perfect for that.
The "fuel" used, cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, may be better known as the explosive RDX.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
So, batteries are just a series of tubes? Or just tubes in series?
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I suppose they really did start the fire.
Which scientist first came up with the idea of lighting these things on fire anyway?
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100x energy density? Can I haz flying car naow?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you read the description of how things work - it's almost the EXACT same design principle of the home-made EMP bomb that you could read about in an early 90's issue of Popular Science, just instead of using sequential plastique explosives and a wound copper tube, you're using a carbon nanotube and some other energy source. Same idea, though - burn from the back, go forwards, create a powerful burst of energy.
It's about 15 years new.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
People should never be bored, especially smart people.
What we have here is some idiot with access to a lot of high technology designing himself a tiny little cannon fuse. Let's burn something, this will be cool. This was obvious, but you're not doing this in your basement; the results aren't obvious, of course. But hey, we have a tiny little tube, like a string or a hair or something; let's light one end and watch it burn!
This is why smart people should never be bored. They shouldn't sit around staring at a wall. They need to find something to play with. The best inventions are usually the simplest shit. Sure the telephone was cool, and that light bulb thing; but some guy was trying to figure out how amber works, and figured out that eletrostatic charge and magnetism aren't the same thing way, way before that. The whole field of research into electricity comes from rubbing a little rod against a piece of cloth and using it to make feathers fly around.
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What can't Carbon Nanotubes do?
"I need to light my laptop battery wick."
Somehow I think this is for non-portable energy generation.
As in it just was not feasible?
That is the way things work in research isn't it? You make lots of discoveries, but not all of them are useful.
Is this technology going to be feasible? No one knows yet.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
All those hours of reading Slashdot and watching movies with all kinds of stuff being blown up, and I didn't put 2 and 2 together to get RDX-powered nanotubes. I feel like I missed my calling.
This is one power-generation technology, however, where you do NOT want a device that goes to 11.
While not really all that useful as a battery on a small scale, this sounds like an excellent back-up system on an industrial scale. If you have ever had to work around back up battery systems for large scale computer operations, they are a pain in the ass and take up quite a bit of space for some not-so-impressive voltage.
Production /= creation.
A laptop rigged with C4 gives a whole new meaning to "wrong password. you have one attempt remaining... before being blown to pieces ."
This is data security.
Warning: this post may contain high-explosive materials. Read at your own risk.
Many people also don't give a damn about where the energy comes from. They want to know if they can hook it up to their car and/or cell phone. They want to know if they have to visit a gas pump to make it work. I'm not saying I disagree with you on the semantics. To us sci/tech literate folk its annoying to see something as basic as energy conservation ignored in speak. However, most people don't care about anything other than how easy it is to use, and how cheap it is. The media, even the science/tech media, tends to pander to this attitude.
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Can anyone who has read the journal paper comment on what kind of thermal/electric conversion efficiency they saw in this process? Did they provide any information as to whether the efficiency was proportional to temperature (i.e. with heat engines, we have the Carnot Efficiency theorem which shows that the maximum theoretical efficiency is proportional to the difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures - do these nanotubes conform to the same, or similar, principle)?
How hot can nanotubes get before breaking down? Could these carbon nanotubes be used with a heat source like coal or nuclear fission or fusion, to generate electricity more efficiently than a steam turbine? (I suppose the tricky part there is that the article describes using a 'thermal wave' to generate the electrical current, and coal/nuclear generally produce a pretty constant heat source, instead of a cyclical heat source, but I suppose there might be some clever way to produce thermal waves from a constant heat source)?
If they couldn't be used to replace a steam turbine, could they somehow be setup as a 'secondary stage' to produce more electricity from the 'waste heat' from the steam turbine?
For future reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_operator#Standard_relational_operators
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
More hype from the materials-science people.
This seems to happen too frequently. Usually in Nature. Someone comes up with some bit of progress in materials science, and it's hailed as the biggest breakthrough since the transistor. Then it's never heard about again.
This particular gimmick is kind of cute, but a general-purpose power supply it's not. They coated carbon nanotubes with RDX, which is a fast explosive, and got a big voltage spike out when they set it off. It's a one-shot device. This might have some weapon application, but it's hard to think of other uses.
Damn hippies. Banana peels didn't get me high and I ain't trying this, either. Don't believe the hype.
RS
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Electricity, in as much as it is a flow of electric charges which can be put to use, is definitely produced. Before, no charges flowed. After, they do. Voila, something has been "produced."
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