There are many ways to generate electricity—batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams, to name a few examples... and now, there's rust.
New research conducted by scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University shows that thin films of rust—iron oxide—can generate electricity when saltwater flows over them. These films represent an entirely new way of generating electricity and could be used to develop new forms of sustainable power production.
Interactions between metal compounds and saltwater often generate electricity, but this is usually the result of a chemical reaction in which one or more compounds are converted to new compounds. Reactions like these are what is at work inside batteries.
In contrast, the phenomenon discovered by Tom Miller, Caltech professor of chemistry, and Franz Geiger, Dow Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern, does not involve chemical reactions, but rather converts the kinetic energy of flowing saltwater into electricity.
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-ultra-thin-layers-rust-electricity.html
More information: Mavis D. Boamah et al. Energy conversion via metal nanolayers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906601116
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:28AM (1 child)
You just invented perpetual motion! Connect the rusty plate battery to a propeller motor! Voilà!! Cruise around the world!
And you answered your own question- you'll get extra power because the saltwater will, what, make the plate clean? No no no, it will rust MORE, and you'll generate MORE POWER!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @10:33PM
imagine a hydrodam with a rusty impeller: it makes soo much energy it can pump more water up then used down! soon all ocean will be dry!