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| Logan Cell (Kim and Logan Report) |
Today, there is a new knowledge for wastewater in seawater. A system that can produce hydrogen, requires no electricity, and free of carbon dioxide. The system uses a microbial electrolysis cell developed by Penn State engineers. And only needed one or two grain of salt, hydrogen will produced.
Previously required to produce hydrogen fuel cells, through a number of electrolysis reaction, hydrogen gas is produced. This method requires high production costs, even involving chemical reaction energy is high enough. Numerous ways have been developed earlier as well, such as nano technology involves reducing energy use and expense of high production.
Logan and Younggy Kim, utilizing the river to the sea border to produce hydrogen. Not only the hydrogen is generated, but organic byproducts may also be generated. Then the system is named Logan cells.
Logan's cells were between 58 and 64 percent efficient and produced between 0.8 to 1.6 cubic meters of hydrogen for every cubic meter of liquid through the cell each day. The researchers estimated that only about 1 percent of the energy produced in the cell was needed to pump water through the system. The key to these microbial electrolysis cells is reverse-electrodialysis or RED That extracts energy from the ionic differences the between salt water and fresh water. A RED stack consists of alternating ion exchange membranes - positive and negative - with each RED contributing additively to the electrical output.
For RED technology to hydrolyze water -- split it into hydrogen and oxygen -- requires 1.8 volts, which would in practice require about 25 pairs of membrane sand increase pumping resistance. However, combining RED technology with exoelectrogenic bacteria -- bacteria that consume organic material and produce an electric current -- reduced the number of RED stacks to five membrane pairs.
"Biodegradable waste liquids and cellulose are abundant and with no energy in and hydrogen out We can get rid of wastewater and by-products. This Could be an inexhaustible source of energy", said Logan.
Logan and Kim's research used platinum as a catalyst on the cathode, but subsequent experimentation showed That a non-precious metal catalyst, molybdenum sulfide, had a 51 percent energy efficiency. The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology supported this work. The results of this study has also been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 19.
For more detail of this work, you can see that from Penn State. Or you can download it, Hydrogen production from inexhaustible supplies of fresh and salt water using microbial reverse-electrodialysis electrolysis cells from here.
Reprinted from Science Daily and Penn State.
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