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posted by martyb on Wednesday July 31 2019, @04:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the seawater-is-more-than-just-salty-water dept.

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


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:48AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:48AM (#873935)

    You have to produce power over time to have energy ...

    No no no, energy is not power over time... To define energy in terms of power is basically the same thing as defining position in terms of velocity. This is like saying "you have to move over time to have position" -- no! Velocity is a rate of change change in position. Likewise, power is a rate of change in energy. You can absolutely have energy without power.

    When energy moves from one place (or form) to another you have work, and the speed at which that happens is power.

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  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by RS3 on Thursday August 01 2019, @01:55PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Thursday August 01 2019, @01:55PM (#874012)

    You're a tiresome pedant. How about: power for a period of time.