River Water and Salty Ocean Water Used to Generate Electricity

From Teheran comes the idea to use alternatively freshwater and sea water to produce electricity. They say their system could, if we used every rivers in the world ( !!! ), generate 13% the of world's electric needs.

Of course, they have to redirect part of freshwater in order to see their system work, but as they say, they give it back once the job has been done.

The pros I see is that it doesn't seem to pollute, or in a very benign way, as they say, but the same has been said about nuclear power...

The cons is that you will have to reshape part of the ecosystem, but frankly, we have beaten up the ecosystem pretty much more than this could do.

I find it very original and I wonder why it hasn't been thought before...



Imagine the above near your home, but with grass and threes. Much safer than walking near a nuclear plant. Just don't go swimming in it!

But as any battery, it must generate a bit of hydrogen, and I haven't seen this issue addressed in the article. This could prove a con, but then again, could it be recuperated and used?

In their lab experiments, Cui's team used seawater they collected from the Pacific Ocean off the California coast and freshwater from Donner Lake, high in the Sierra Nevada. They achieved 74 percent efficiency in converting the potential energy in the battery to electrical current, but Cui thinks with simple modifications, the battery could be 85 percent efficient.

My question here is; will the radioactivity leaking into the ocean from Japan, and to some extent in the atmosphere, could have adverse effects this technology?

It is doubtful it would be applied on a large scale, but with current events, it could get some momentum sooner or later.

the "Ocean Battery"

Major problem, sediment.

Reshaping waterways has caused a lot of environmental issues.

reply to post by boncho


Could you elaborate about the sediments? How do you think it would impair the efficiency of this huge battery?

Surly they had time to think about it? Still...

reply to post by boncho

Reshaping waterways has caused a lot of environmental issues.

As with the hydro power plants. They take a lot of space and you have to reshape the ecosystem.
You also have to do it if you build a nuclear plant, so...

Originally posted by NowanKenubi
reply to post by boncho

 

Reshaping waterways has caused a lot of environmental issues.

As with the hydro power plants. They take a lot of space and you have to reshape the ecosystem.
You also have to do it if you build a nuclear plant, so...

Personally never been in favor of hydro dams either. In certain areas they are great, in others, they cause massive problems. I will try and get back to this thread and post some more info tomorrow. But the idea is interesting nonetheless.

Very interesting indeed

My first concern here would be the release of chlorine gas in any electrolytic process involving seawater (NaCl solution) as it wouldn't attract any 'green' credentials if it quickly or even slowly turned the surrounding area into a dead zone for flora and fauna. That very issue almost stopped a major project here involving the installation of a monopole undersea submarine DC power cable which used the sea as the return path and, in that case, it was only allowed to proceed with a much more expensive design wherein the cable sheath itself was used as the return conductor to eliminate any chance of chlorine release.

"Fars News Agency" need to learn to write a proper news article, they didn't mention anywhere in their article the name of the university that conducted this research, Stanford, or link to them as the source.

Stanford researchers use river water and salty ocean water to generate electricity

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Thanks! I, too need to check those things...

Will go read that!

reply to post by Pilgrum


Are there ways to contain or use those emanations? Surely it can be used for something, like useful? But I must be dreaming... Thanks!

reply to post by NowanKenubi


Chlorine has multiple industrial uses but it's a gas so it's difficult, if not impossible, to contain if it's released over a large open area like the surface of a lake as in this application. It's deadly and ghastly stuff that'll corrode metal faster than you'd think possible as I discovered when performing some small-scale electrolysis experiments involving chlorine salts - copper wires were no obstacle to it whatsoever. It's also famous as being one of the first chemical weapons used on the battlefield.

The best defense against chlorine is not to release it in the first place so I'm surprised to see no mention of how it's prevented or contained in this process.

reply to post by Pilgrum


Thanks for the info... Ah! It was too good to be true! Well, that leaves about only Tesla's concept of free electricity
as a safe energy to produce...

But are there ways to reduce the production/emission of the chlorine?

reply to post by NowanKenubi


That's an excellent question that should be asked of the proponents of this idea and perhaps they have a means of dealing with it safely. It's just a shame that it doesn't rate a mention at this stage in the basic proposal, telling perhaps.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

Funding for this research came from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and the U.S. Department of Energy.

I was revisiting the article you linked and took notice of this...

Do they know something we don't? Is it tied with the Saudis building an enormous mansion in Colorado? Instead of selling oil, they would "rent" this system worldwide?...

( Hey, we ARE ATS! )...

reply to post by Pilgrum


I was about to write to the author of the article, and decided to read it once more. Then I noticed this;

Cui's team had the potential environmental impact of their battery in mind when they designed it. They chose manganese dioxide for the positive electrode in part because it is environmentally benign.

So, I looked for manganese dioxide, to see what it can bring regarding the safety of this project, and found the following;

MnO2 catalyses several reactions that form O2. In a classical laboratory demonstration, heating a mixture of potassium chlorate and manganese dioxide produces oxygen gas. Manganese dioxide also catalyses the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water

Link to last quote

Knowing they will be able with this system to generate electricity with both sodium and chlorine ions, and knowing that chlorine will become oxygen, it is looking to be safe. I might be wrong as I am not a chemist in any way.
I was referring to hydrogen being a concern in my OP and in the last quote, it says hydrogen will become oxygen and water. This also looks good. I'll add both "reductions" happen when sodium and chlorine ions interact with manganese dioxide.

Now, I need only to confirm that sodium becomes something safe when interacting with manganese dioxide.

Chlorine (atomic # 17) can't 'become' oxygen (atomic # 8) unless you find a way to knock 9 protons and 9 neutrons out of every chlorine nucleus. Now what has the atomic # 9? - flourine which is decidedly even worse than chlorine.

The only safe way to dispose of chlorine is to react it with something to form a safe and stable compound like sodium chloride NaCl (table salt) but that's they're starting off with and most of the chlorine will reform NaCl in that solution rich in chlorine and sodium ions (ie salt water). Some chlorine will however escape as a gas during electrolysis because the sodium and chlorine ions are attracted to opposite electrodes and I can't see any way of avoiding that (some will form bubbles and escape to the atmosphere). The imbalance of sodium resulting from lost chlorine will bond with hydroxyl ions to form NaOH (sodium hydroxide or caustic soda) within the solution, increasing the PH of the water slightly compared to the starting value. Orphaned hydrogen atoms from this process will also bubble and escape to the atmosphere. Hydrogen and chlorine escaping will have a tendency to form HCl (hydrogen chloride) but that can be a violent event because a mixture of those 2 gases is extremely unstable. That reaction can be triggered simply by a bright light as demonstrated in the linked experiment.

Photochemical H + Cl

water has so much potentional but its free, the people behind the curtain know this so untill we pay our fortunes in water tax nothing will some of this check this vid . even look wat happened to the guy that invented



itwww.youtube.com...

reply to post by wedidgothacked

Stanley Meyer died suddenly on March 21, 1998 after dining at a restaurant. An autopsy report by the Franklin County, Ohio coroner concluded that Meyer had died of a cerebral aneurysm, but conspiracy theorists insist that he was poisoned to suppress the technology, and that oil companies and the United States government were involved in his death.[1][2][15] Meyer's patents are still available online,[16] although there has as yet been no independent verification of his claims.

It has already been taken care of, apparently...

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Pilgrum


I want to thank you for posting here with such good info!

I'm still reading your last post and link, but wanted to ask you about this;

To enhance efficiency, the positive electrode of the battery is made from nanorods of manganese dioxide. That increases the surface area available for interaction with the sodium ions by roughly 100 times compared with other materials. The nanorods make it possible for the sodium ions to move in and out of the electrode with ease, speeding up the process.

If their system really has an increase of a 100 times for interaction with the sodium ions, wouldn't that help to solve the problem you pointed in your last post? Or if the speeding of the process would, in the end, amount to roughly the same quantity of poisoned gases being released?

reply to post by NowanKenubi


Increased surface area makes the electrolytic process more effective for a given size and that would make it more effective at producing gases as well unfortunately.