Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen 187
MikeChino writes "Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport."
Thermodynamics (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting side-effect: (Score:3, Interesting)
Can be used as noise insulation. There might be some drawback to building walls serving as giant water tanks, but the upside is that living next to the freeway might actually have some benefits.
Re:Thermodynamics (Score:4, Interesting)
The #1 problem here would be.....
If you had an infrastructure where highway barriers were full of water, generating a perfectly combustion mixture (like, not just good, but perfect) flowing into pipes, which would (obviously) need to be somewhere close to the road. If they are elevated, they run a risk of contact with a vehicle, or flames from an accident. I've seen bridges melt from accidents under them. Below the road, the gases rising create an extreme explosion hazard at ground level. One cigarette butt thrown out a window, and you could have an entire highway explode.
Anywhere around a highway is a potential heavy impact and fire hazard. If you watch the news, you'll see the "freak" accidents where cars leave the road and end up in houses or other buildings, or burst into flames for various reasons. Anyone who's worked for a while as in the emergency response industry (police, fire, paramedics) have seen vehicles on their roof. Thousands of pounds of pressure may break a pesky hydrogen pipeline.
I'm not against it though, it sounds like an interesting idea, although not a solution. If cars were powered by hydrogen instead of gasoline, and the noise on highways produced hydrogen to power them, the evil laws of thermodynamics jump in and say "don't get your hopes up."
Wall linings (Score:4, Interesting)
If these can be manufactured cheaply enough, I imagine boards of this being made and marketed by Gib for any place where you want soundproofing or a room with 'dead' acoustics.
Any vibrations? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Whats the real efficiency... (Score:5, Interesting)
You should measure not only the efficiency, but the total cost of energy generation.
What does this mean..? (Score:1, Interesting)
- with ?? kg of this crystal and ?? kg of water one can drive a car for ?? km
- a car like this would cost ??
This weeks Green Energy Hype (Score:5, Interesting)
So this was the best Slashdot could come up with for this weeks Green Energy Hype of the Week? Guess it was a slow week because this one is lamer than most.
Ok, ASSuming they can figure out a way to separate the H and O before they just combine again. ASSume this tech actually works outside the lab and can be scaled up. ASSume it performs as advertised when scaled up. 18% conversion efficiency on sound waves? Sound doesn't carry a lot of energy to begin with and they will harvest 18% of it before losses in compressing the H. Oh wow, if we ran this stuff down a mile of busy highway we MIGHT generate enough energy to push one crappy green gocart/car down that highway every day.
And that is the problem with most alternative energy schemes, they depend on ignorant people who don't know how the world works. There are LOTS of ways to extract energy from nature. The problem is that there aren't many that can compete with the existing sources because they are just so darned good, which was why we standardized on them in the first place. And if we actually do find a new good source, once scaled up it is a veritable certainty that we will discover that it too isn't a free lunch and that it also has a downside somewhere. And the second certainty is that the Greenies will be working to ban it because if it actually works it won't be alternative anymore. Kinda like music, when that great alternative/undergound band signs a contract and releases a hit most of their original fans declare them 'sellouts' and glom onto the newest unheard of band.
Yada yada yada (Score:2, Interesting)
Amazing Tech (Score:3, Interesting)
This is such a beautiful idea.
Beautiful beautiful idea.
I will never think of something like this.
I do not care whether it is possible to generate energy efficiently or not - this is a really really cool tech.
Here's an Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
While this of course wouldn't be effective as a primary generative source, it could be very useful as a secondary income/efficiency improvement. Some current examples similar situations are 1 - Sugar Beet Processors: They use the dried leftovers from the plants to power the plant for processing sugar beets, somewhere in Hawaii they used to generate all of the electricity for the community from the excess power at the sugar beet plant. 2 - Dairy farm Power: Some larger dairies these days actually use the methane generated off of the cow manure to generate power for the milking operation. The way I would see this specific technology being used is in industrial applications. Where you have large loud equipment, such as electrical turbines, car shreaders, metal presses, or anything else loud you would surround it with walls of the crystals and water, this would generate the company some hydrogen which it could either sell or run through a fuel cell and pump back into its operation. And as a nice side effect it would decrease the sound given off by the equipment making for a better working environment. Of course this only works if the crystals can be mass produced very cheaply.
Re:Thermodynamics (Score:1, Interesting)
Those concrete barriers are actually being replaced by Steel SIPs filled with expanded polystyrene foam, produced by a company called OceanSafe and sold in the northeast by a company called Hodara Property Management. They are made from recycled materials and the panels themselves are of course recyclable. They are both cheaper and more effective at blocking sound then concrete barriers and are extremely useful in home construction, their primary use. Although not wildly popular due to resistance from builders who are used to building with stick, Steel SIPs are to the construction industry what the computer was to the paper.
Re:Thermodynamics (Score:1, Interesting)
There seems to be a missing option in all of these comments. No one mentioned any possibility of having them under the road. I suppose the vibrations would be dampened more, but I see as safer as I don't believe cars could rupture the asphalt and I also doubt it would be able to catch fire. Next to this option would be some low structure that cars could drive over if they lose control (those low-riders being the only trouble).
In isolated locations the structure could be attached to under overpasses. All that echoing would increase performance as well as the distance that the energy made needs to travel would be reduced as overpasses are typically closer to higher traffic areas.
Re:This gas can't be transported... (Score:3, Interesting)
> The gases are created together, you can't easily separate them.
H2 quickly rises. O2 slowly sinks (air is ~78% N2, and O2 is slightly heavier than N2).
So you build your water tank to have a lot of space above its "fill to here" line, and you put a long, thin, vertical tube out the top. Let the process go naturally until you trip a pressure gauge, at which point you bleed pure H2 from a valve at the top and almost-pure O2 from a valve at the bottom. You should get twice as much H2 as O2, of course (2 H20 yields 2 H2 + 1 O2).
If the system is otherwise airtight and fresh water is added from a higher tank to a point at the bottom of the main tank, you'll eventually suck all the "normal" air out through the O2 bleed, and from then on the O2 bleed will be tainted only by whatever came in already dissolved into the water.
Both the pure H2 capture tank and the almost-pure O2 capture tank are still dangerous, but at least you can separate them and use them for whatever you want. The H2 for a potential hydrogen economy, the O2 for industrial uses, maybe including things it's currently not used for since there isn't normally a cheap source of pure O2. I know yeast sucks O2 out of the air as it grows (breweries can be deadly to humans if not ventilated), and blast furnaces might benefit from richer air input.
Re:This SOUNDS Like A Breakthrough! (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be inefficient in principle but HUGELY efficient in practice since it would be using energy that is otherwise WASTED.
Even better, in many cases said noise is undesirable and needs to be blocked or deflected as it is. Using it to generate hydrogen instead = win/win?
How does this compare to Hydro plants? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't read TFA[1], but this isn't new at all; in fact, electricity has been produced this way for hundreds of years, albeit very tiny amounts of electricity. A piezoelectric microphone [wikipedia.org] produces electricity, as does a coil and magnet microphone. Take a microphone, put each lead on the end of a diode to convert it to DC, plug the diodes into water, and one lead will produce oxygen while the other lead produces hydrogen. However, the amounts produced will be incredibly tiny.
You can buy a piezoelectric microphone for a buck or less, but you'd need a shitload of them to produce useable amounts of electricity. The turning electricity into hydrogen [2] [slashdot.org] thing is also quite old, and sounds like a gimmick to me.
[1] I must not be new here. From experience I can guess that they've found a way to produce more energy than expected and that the science writers will leave out important info, get it all wrong, have nothing important that isn't in the summary, or will be two paragraphs spread out over twenty ad-laden pages.
[2] Link is to one of my journals, Taking a "hydrogen bomb" to school