Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Cheap, clean electricity from water

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 00:42:14 -0400

Scientists make power breakthrough

First discovery of its kind since 1839;
 cheap, clean electricity from water may
 one day fuel your cellphone batteries

EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada

October 20, 2003

One day, if a discovery by two University of Alberta engineering professors
bears fruit, cellphones could be powered by a pressurized water system that
would eliminate the need to recharge batteries.

With the help of two graduate students, engineering professors Daniel Kwok
and Larry Kostiuk were able to light a small bulb by squeezing a syringe of
ordinary tap water through a ceramic "filter" containing 10,000 microscopic
tubes.

They did it by harnessing the natural energy that is created on a very tiny
scale when a flowing liquid meets a solid surface.

Their discovery, touted as the first new way of producing electricity in 160
years, was published today by the London-based Institute of Physics.

"Hydrocarbon fuels are still the best source of energy but they're fast
running out and so new options like this one could be vital in the future,"
said Kostiuk.

Kostiuk, who specializes in thermodynamics, and Kwok, whose expertise is in
nanofabrication -- combined their skills with those of grad students Jun
Yang and Fuzhi Lu.

They've termed it an Electrokinetic Microchannel Battery.

The apparatus, which is being lauded in news reports today around the world,
easily produces up to 10 volts, about the same as a car battery, but a
current of only a few thousandths of an ampere, Kostiuk said.

At a fraction of a watt, that's not enough to run a light bulb. But it could
be enough to power the so-called "lab-on-a-chip" instruments envisioned by
those working in nanotechnology or on MEMS -- micro-electronic mechanical
systems, he said.

When pressed for a more everyday example, Kostiuk came up with the
cellphone, which uses the voltage the device is capable of producing and a
relatively small current.

Other uses might include powering Palm Pilots or calculators with water
batteries.

Thinking on a grand scale, it could even be a clean-energy alternative to
solar or wind power, he said. "But this would need huge bodies of water to
work on a commercial scale."

Kostiuk said the research is still at an early exploratory stage. The model
they built in the lab was to show people that the process works to produce
electricity, he said.

"There's also a whole bunch of mathematics associated with it to prove to
people it wasn't just a lucky guess -- that it was going to be there."

But the significance of the discovery wasn't lost on Kostiuk and Kwok, or
their boss David Lynch, the dean of engineering.

"For the first time in a very long time we found a new way to convert one
form of energy directly into electricity with no moving parts," Kostiuk
said. "We were quite excited about it and that was the origins of the paper
that's appearing in the Institute of Physics journal."

Lynch called it an incredible fundamental research breakthrough, the first
of its kind in more than 160 years.

"This groundbreaking discovery will earn these researchers and the
University of Alberta a place of prominence in scientific journals and
textbooks for decades to come," he said.

Anticipating that electrokinetic cells may find numerous commercial
applications, the U of A has filed a patent application and the inventors
are working with the university's technology transfer group to develop a
commercialization strategy.

It's been known for many decades that when a liquid such as water comes into
contact with a non-conducting solid such as glass, ceramic or stone, an
interaction occurs between the two at a microscopic level that creates a
charge on the surface, Kostiuk said.

Because of the movement of positive and negative ions, the solid becomes
negatively charged and the water next to the surface positively charged.

Kostiuk said his collaboration with Kwok and the discovery came about
somewhat by chance after he was appointed chairman of the mechanical
engineering department. He went around asking everybody what their research
topic was and had a discussion with Kwok about many of the aspects of the
behaviour of liquids and solids that led to their invention.

Kwok was explaining if one puts the water through a "microchannel," the
positive and negative ions move so that one end becomes positive and the
other negative. "I asked him ... couldn't we exploit that to create
electricity," Kostiuk said.

Kostiuk was surprised by his response -- that it was possible but it hadn't
been done before. In his turn, Kwok was surprised by the idea.

"I was walking on a cloud for the next day. I couldn't believe nobody else
had really looked at this and done it before," Kostiuk said. One thing led
to another and the result was indeed a battery -- but one unlike any that
have gone before it.

HOW IT WORKS

When any liquid, such as water, comes in contact with a solid, such as
glass, a tiny layer just a few millionths of a metre thick is formed at the
interface of the glass and water. Called the electric double layer (EDL),
this layer carries a small electrical charge.

By pushing the water through tiny tubes or channels in the glass about the
same thickness as the electric double layer, an electrical current is
produced and hence a voltage difference across the ends of the channels.

When an external circuit is added by placing electrodes at the ends of the
channels, electrical energy is produced as current flows between the
electrodes. The source of that energy is the work done to push the water
through the channels.

What continues to strike Larry Kostiuk is the simplicity of their invention.

Using a syringe, they pressed water through their "filter," a two-centimetre
glass disc with 450,000 holes in it -- something commonly found in labs, he
said. The holes act as the microchannels where the charge is created.

They attached metal electrodes at either end of their device and connected
them using a wire to create a pathway for the current -- and they had
electricity.

"Embarrassingly, that's it," he said.

POWERFUL BREAKTHROUGHS

- 1800: Allessandro Volta discovered electrochemical effect used in
batteries

- 1821: Thomas Seebeck discovered Seeback effect used in thermoelectric
generators

- 1831: Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction used in
electric generators

- 1839: Edmond Becquerel discovered photovoltaic effect used in solar cells

- 1839: Sir William Grove discovered proton exchange membranes used in fuel
cells

- 2002: Larry Kostiuk and Daniel Kwok discovered electrokinetic effect -- 
uses unknown at this time

http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=A919BDDB-AC41-4748-8872-DED552733D02

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