"Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?" - fact or fiction?

[Glenn]

Fact or fiction?:

Mar 8, 2012, Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48889
Quote: "...
Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have invented a
new kind of graphene-based "battery" that runs solely on ambient heat.
The device is said to capture the thermal energy of ions in a solution
and convert it into electricity.
....
According to the researchers, the battery works rather like a solar cell.
...."


1 Mar 2012, Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from
Thermal Energy of the Environment:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
PDF:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.0161v2

br,

Glenn

 

[Jasen Betts]

Fact or fiction?:

Mar 8, 2012, Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48889
Quote: "...
Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have invented a
new kind of graphene-based "battery" that runs solely on ambient heat.
The device is said to capture the thermal energy of ions in a solution
and convert it into electricity.
...
According to the researchers, the battery works rather like a solar cell.
..."

From that it sounds like they've summoned Maxwell's Demon, if they had
done that it would be big news like "cold fusion" was.
so it's probably not as described.

 

[Gib Bogle]

From that it sounds like they've summoned Maxwell's Demon, if they had
done that it would be big news like "cold fusion" was.
so it's probably not as described.

The explanation given is certainly deficient:
"Since electrons move through graphene at extremely high speeds (thanks
to the fact that they behave like relativistic particles with no rest
mass), they travel much faster in the carbon-based material than in the
ionic solution. The released electron therefore naturally prefers to
travel through the graphene circuit rather than through the solution.
This is how the voltage is produced by the device, explains Xu."

The electrons "travel through the graphene circuit" - in which
direction? What is the significance of one Ag electrode and one Au?

 

[PeterD]

Fact or fiction?:

Mar 8, 2012, Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48889
Quote: "...
Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have invented a
new kind of graphene-based "battery" that runs solely on ambient heat.
The device is said to capture the thermal energy of ions in a solution
and convert it into electricity.
...
According to the researchers, the battery works rather like a solar cell.
..."


1 Mar 2012, Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from
Thermal Energy of the Environment:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
PDF:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.0161v2

br,

Glenn

Well that's funny! Give it some thought--to capture electricity from
heat, the device would have to get 'cold.' Very cold at that. This might
make a great heat exchanger (AC unit) for example (if it were real) but
the bottom line is that there's no way in blue hell they've done
something real.

 

[Gib Bogle]

Fact or fiction?:

Mar 8, 2012, Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48889
Quote: "...
Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have invented a
new kind of graphene-based "battery" that runs solely on ambient heat.
The device is said to capture the thermal energy of ions in a solution
and convert it into electricity.
...
According to the researchers, the battery works rather like a solar cell.
..."


1 Mar 2012, Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from
Thermal Energy of the Environment:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
PDF:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.0161v2

br,

Glenn

The comments following the article are amusing. If you read them to the
end you learn that the inventor of this wonderful device is going for
his M.Phil. My advice is ... don't hold your breath.

 

[Martin Brown]

From that it sounds like they've summoned Maxwell's Demon, if they had
done that it would be big news like "cold fusion" was.
so it's probably not as described.

Not necessarily. They could just be stealing an electron off copper(II)
ions into the graphene lattice during the collision reducing it to
copper(I) and then it rapidly gets oxidised again from the air. T

Be interesting to know whether it also works for iron(II/III) or cerium
(II/III) for instance. Their controls with NaCl and DI water were
inadequate. Other transition metal and rare earth salts with comparable
oxidation states to copper need trying (iron would be the most obvious).

Sounds to me rather like a novel implementation of a new air battery
which converts oxygen from the air into electricity - the only
difference here is that nothing in the cell is consumed in the process.

 

[Rich Webb]

The comments following the article are amusing. If you read them to the
end you learn that the inventor of this wonderful device is going for
his M.Phil. My advice is ... don't hold your breath.

There was also a review article in Science News this week.
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/341802/title/Old_battery_gets_a_high-tech_makeover>

The take-away quote "'Quoting power and energy density from small lab
cells is not realistic,' says M. Stanley Whittingham, a chemist at
Binghamton University in New York. 'Real cells typically have capacities
of only 20 percent of the numbers calculated in the lab.'"

Still, something in that direction seems likely to be the next step in
cell evolution, with an efficient microscale structural organization.

 

[Fred Abse]

What is the significance of one Ag electrode and one Au?

That's what he's going to use as an argument for getting more sponsorship
money.?

 

[Adrian Jansen]

Fact or fiction?:

Mar 8, 2012, Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48889
Quote: "...
Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have invented a
new kind of graphene-based "battery" that runs solely on ambient heat.
The device is said to capture the thermal energy of ions in a solution
and convert it into electricity.
...
According to the researchers, the battery works rather like a solar cell.
..."


1 Mar 2012, Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from
Thermal Energy of the Environment:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0161
PDF:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.0161v2

br,

Glenn

Do a global search-and-replace for "Graphene" and use "Snake oil" for
the replacement. I doubt the total amount of real knowledge lost would
be very significant.

 

[Jasen Betts]

George Herold wrote:


OK, if it will do that, and continue for a long time, a stack of them will
make a fantastic memory backup battery. That has definite uses, as
there are many systems that have to have some volatile memory preserved.

But, it sure won't power the next generation of electric cars.

to be useful it needs to be distinguishable fron Johnson noise.

 

[Martin Brown]

OK, If I'm reading it right, ~1 microamp at ~350mV. Less than a micro
watt of power.

So what?

Early lab versions of anything tend to be pretty puny. If they have
found a new way of making a battery then it is a real novelty and
potentially will get better once some real R&D is applied.

The paper above is poor and fails to address fairly obvious chemical and
physical tests but it still reports something interesting. After
thinking about it a bit more manganese chloride would be another
transition metal electrolyte to try instead of copper. And also copper
sulphate and nitrate soluble salts to prove it is copper and not
chloride that is the important part (it may be both).

Same applies to the Mott transistor recently reported in the physics
press - the prototype achieves a mere 100:1 dynamic range which is puny
compared to a million for a modern FET, but in some ways the surprise is
that they have managed to make it work at all. It is now down to the
process engineers to turn a physics discovery into useful parts. This
may be tricky if it truly requires an ionic liquid gate to work.

 

[Uwe Hercksen]

Sounds to me rather like a novel implementation of a new air battery
which converts oxygen from the air into electricity - the only
difference here is that nothing in the cell is consumed in the process.

Hello,

but it is not possible to convert oxygen into eltrical energy if there
is nothing which is reacting with the oxygen. The nitrogen of the air
will not deliver energy when reacting with the oxygen and the reaction
products should not released into the air.

Bye

 

[My Name Is Tzu How Do You Do]

If it is DC, then I think that distinguishes it. If it was AC
1 uA at 350mV then you are quite right!

Jon

It's JonElson noise.

 

[P E Schoen]

"Glenn" wrote in message

Fact or fiction?:

Mar 8, 2012, Graphene in new ‘battery’ breakthrough?:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/48889

[snip]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/03/23/graphene-battery-tech/1

Paul