Posted on 06/07/2021 10:55:57 AM PDT by Red Badger
MIT engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them.
The liquid, an organic solvent, draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive chemical reactions or to power micro- or nanoscale robots, the researchers say.
"This mechanism is new, and this way of generating energy is completely new," says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. "This technology is intriguing because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with no wires."
In a new study describing this phenomenon, the researchers showed that they could use this electric current to drive a reaction known as alcohol oxidation—an organic chemical reaction that is important in the chemical industry.
Strano is the senior author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Communications. The lead authors of the study are MIT graduate student Albert Tianxiang Liu and former MIT researcher Yuichiro Kunai. Other authors include former graduate student Anton Cottrill, postdocs Amir Kaplan and Hyunah Kim, graduate student Ge Zhang, and recent MIT graduates Rafid Mollah and Yannick Eatmon.
Unique properties
The new discovery grew out of Strano's research on carbon nanotubes—hollow tubes made of a lattice of carbon atoms, which have unique electrical properties. In 2010, Strano demonstrated, for the first time, that carbon nanotubes can generate "thermopower waves." When a carbon nanotube is coated with layer of fuel, moving pulses of heat, or thermopower waves, travel along the tube, creating an electrical current.
That work led Strano and his students to uncover a related feature of carbon nanotubes. They found that when part of a nanotube is coated with a Teflon-like polymer, it creates an asymmetry that makes it possible for electrons to flow from the coated to the uncoated part of the tube, generating an electrical current. Those electrons can be drawn out by submerging the particles in a solvent that is hungry for electrons.
To harness this special capability, the researchers created electricity-generating particles by grinding up carbon nanotubes and forming them into a sheet of paper-like material. One side of each sheet was coated with a Teflon-like polymer, and the researchers then cut out small particles, which can be any shape or size. For this study, they made particles that were 250 microns by 250 microns.
When these particles are submerged in an organic solvent such as acetonitrile, the solvent adheres to the uncoated surface of the particles and begins pulling electrons out of them.
"The solvent takes electrons away, and the system tries to equilibrate by moving electrons," Strano says. "There's no sophisticated battery chemistry inside. It's just a particle and you put it into solvent and it starts generating an electric field."
Particle power
The current version of the particles can generate about 0.7 volts of electricity per particle. In this study, the researchers also showed that they can form arrays of hundreds of particles in a small test tube. This "packed bed" reactor generates enough energy to power a chemical reaction called an alcohol oxidation, in which an alcohol is converted to an aldehyde or a ketone. Usually, this reaction is not performed using electrochemistry because it would require too much external current.
"Because the packed bed reactor is compact, it has more flexibility in terms of applications than a large electrochemical reactor," Zhang says. "The particles can be made very small, and they don't require any external wires in order to drive the electrochemical reaction."
In future work, Strano hopes to use this kind of energy generation to build polymers using only carbon dioxide as a starting material. In a related project, he has already created polymers that can regenerate themselves using carbon dioxide as a building material, in a process powered by solar energy. This work is inspired by carbon fixation, the set of chemical reactions that plants use to build sugars from carbon dioxide, using energy from the sun.
In the longer term, this approach could also be used to power micro- or nanoscale robots. Strano's lab has already begun building robots at that scale, which could one day be used as diagnostic or environmental sensors. The idea of being able to scavenge energy from the environment to power these kinds of robots is appealing, he says.
"It means you don't have to put the energy storage on board," he says. "What we like about this mechanism is that you can take the energy, at least in part, from the environment."
Explore further:
Battery substitutes produce current by burning fuel-coated carbon nanotubes like a fuse
More information: Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23038-7
Journal information: Nature Communications
Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
FREE Energy Tomorrow Ping!..................
Cool stuff and only the beginning. Government needs to get out of the way of research, stop politicizing it and let it run its course.
wasn’t tesla on to something like this with static electricity?
Cross engineer it with those 24,000 year old Rotifers.
Then turn them loose at landfills.
John Galt is gonna be pissed that they stole his idea!
Paging Mr. Galt, Mr. John Galt please pick up the white courtesy phone.
You bastard! Two seconds! (jk)
Yes.......................
;)
Just what we need. Robots with a fully independent power source.
I thought Terminator was supposed to be a warning, but it appears we’re using it as a cookbook.
Cool. In my view, all you’d need to do is load up the carbon nanotube with deuterium and the electrons might actually generate LENR.
https://fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=7288
Carbon nanotube assisted fusion?
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2656350A1/en
Methods of generating energy and/or he-4 using graphene based materials
Abstract
There is disclosed a method of generating non-ionizing radiation, non-ionizing 4He atoms, or a combination of both, the method comprising: contacting graphene materials with a source of deuterium; and aging the graphene materials in the source of deuterium for a time sufficient to generate non-ionizing radiation, non-ionizing 4He atoms. In one embodiment, graphene materials may comprise carbon nanotubes, such as nitrogen doped single walled or multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Unlike an alpha particle, the non-ionizing 4He atoms generated by the disclosed method are a low energy particles, such as one having an energy of less than 1 MeV, such as less than 100 keV. Other non-ionizing radiation that can be generated by the disclosed process include soft x-rays, phonons or energetic electrons within the carbon material, and visible light.
https://coldfusionnow.org/seldon-technologies-nasa-and-lenr/
Seldon Technologies, NASA, and LENR
“The present disclosure combines the unique properties of nanotubes and in one embodiment carbon nanotubes, in a novel manifestation designed to meet current and future energy needs in an environmentally friendly way. Devices powered with nanotube based nuclear power systems may substantially change the current state of power distribution.”
–Retired U.S. Rear Admiral Craig E. Steidle of Seldon Technologies on cold fusion nanotube-based nuclear power systems.
Carbon P. Dubbs ?
In engineering, you haven’t made it until they name a dimensionless number after you, like Reynolds.
What happens when you suck all the energy out of the environment?
“Carbon P. Dubbs?”
First cousin of Maynard G. Krebbs.
I dunno, the current administration has pretty much done that with the economy.
I'm noticing a trend here. I doubt these kids took any "Woke" math or were taught CRT BS.
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