Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: scientizscht on 18/10/2018 11:19:46
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Hello,
I have some charged particles in a solution.
How can I use that energy to create a battery or run an electric circuit?
Thanks!
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Hello,
I have some charged particles in a solution.
How can I use that energy to create a battery or run an electric circuit?
Thanks!
Try some making a very old fashioned battery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery . copper acid and iron simple
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Just because you have charged particles in solution does not mean you are creating a potential difference, otherwise known as a voltage.
If I take a sachet of salt and dissolve it in water I will end up with a solution of dissolved charges. But because the positive and negative ions are equal in number and randomly distributed through the solution there is no net potential and hence no voltage would be obtained.
A voltage or power source is produced when a chemical potential difference is exploited to drive electrons. A good example would be two metals of differing reactivities separated by a conductive solution. One metal, the more reactive one, wants to surrender electrons to the other, which wants to acquire them and become reduced in the process.
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You can, in principle, make one of these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_cell
A possible indication of how useful they are is the fact that more or less the opposite process is done on a massive scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis
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If by "power source" you include "a source of heat", there are a number of options:
- You can dissolve a piece of metal in acid to produce charged ions in solution, and this produces heat
- Much safer: You can have an ionic solution which is supercooled - when you click a button, it triggers crystallization, and gets warm. I have seen these used as hand-warmers.