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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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @10:41PM (2 children)
i am guessing that a non working stainless steel plate and a rusty steel plate have total different friction.
i'll even wager a bet that a rusty plate system that is producing energy has even MEOR friction.
what would be interesting is if electricity is supply TOO the rusty plates if the friction would decrease?
maybe this will get you nuclear energized RUSTY submarine hulls ^_^
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday August 02 2019, @04:21AM (1 child)
Totally agree, but if you've ever been a boat owner or watched when they refuel you can see just how much energy they use pushing through the water. There is a huge stream of energy going from the fuel tank to dissipated in the water. Can this rusty iron catch more of it than it costs? I don't know, but it's worth checking out.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday August 02 2019, @11:54AM
Maybe the generation of power in rusty steel is the mechanism by which the friction works?