Thermodynamics

1. “Vesuvio: The eruption of 1631”. . Retrieved 2021-06-08.
2. ^ “This Day in History: Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1631 | NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)”. . Retrieved 2021-06-08.
3. ^ “Vesuvio79”. sakuya.vulcania.jp. Retrieved 2021-04-03.

Healing Crystals: What They Can and Can’t Do

Medically reviewed by Debra Rose Wilson, Ph.D., MSN, R.N., IBCLC, AHN-BC, CHT — Written by Meg Walters on September 17, 2021

Two researchers, the brothers Pierre and Jack Curie, conducted a study in 1880 and found that changing the temperature of crystals and putting pressure on them could create electricity.

This is known as the piezoelectric effect. It’s used in technology like:

• microphones
• quartz watches
• inkjet printers
• sonar
• medical implants

The work of the brothers Curie suggests that holding crystals may have a minor effect on the body’s energy levels, though whether that effect can produce healing power is still up for debate.

People Tied to Project Veritas Scrutinized in Theft of Diary From Biden’s Daughter The F.B.I. carried out search warrants in New York as part of a Justice Department investigation into how pages from Ashley Biden’s journal came to be published by a right wing website.

Ammonia—a renewable fuel made from sun, air, and water—could power the globe without carbon

With copious solar and wind power, Australia aims to displace Haber-Bosch, a dirty, 100-year-old recipe for making ammonia

• 12 JUL 2018
• BYROBERT F. SERVICE

A liquid nitrogen vehicle is powered by liquid nitrogen, which is stored in a tank. Traditional nitrogen engine designs work by heating the liquid nitrogen in a heat exchanger, extracting heat from the ambient air and using the resulting pressurized gas to operate a piston or rotary motor. Vehicles propelled by liquid nitrogen have been demonstrated, but are not used commercially. One such vehicle, Liquid Air was demonstrated in 1902.

Can we convert nitrogen from the air into liquid nitrogen? Yes. Liquid nitrogen is produced commercially from the cryogenicdistillation of liquified air or from the liquefication of pure nitrogen derived from air using pressure swing adsorption. An air compressor is used to compress filtered air to high pressure; the high-pressure gas is cooled back to ambient temperature, and allowed to expand to a low pressure. The expanding air cools greatly (the Joule–Thomson effect), and oxygen, nitrogen, and argon are separated by further stages of expansion and distillation. Small-scale production of liquid nitrogen is easily achieved using this principle.^{[citation needed]}

Pulling Nitrogen From the Air Read in app By Matthew L. Wald Aug. 26, 1987

Electricity generation system based on nitrogen

Harvesting Energy from CO₂ Emissions

• H. V. M. Hamelers^*†
• O. Schaetzle^†
• J. M. Paz-García^†
• P. M. Biesheuvel^†‡
• C. J. N. Buisman^†‡

View Author InformationCite this: Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2014, 1, 1, 31–35Publication Date:July 23, 2013https://doi.org/10.1021/ez4000059Copyright © 2013 American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Abstract

When two fluids with different compositions are mixed, mixing energy is released. This holds true for both liquids and gases, though in the case of gases, no technology is yet available to harvest this energy source. Mixing the CO₂ in combustion gases with air represents a source of energy with a total annual worldwide capacity of 1570 TWh. To harvest the mixing energy from CO₂-containing gas emissions, we use pairs of porous electrodes, one selective for anions and the other selective for cations. We demonstrate that when an aqueous electrolyte, flushed with either CO₂ or air, alternately flows between these selective porous electrodes, electrical energy is gained. The efficiency of this process reached 24% with deionized water as the aqueous electrolyte and 32% with a 0.25 M monoethanolamine (MEA) solution as the electrolyte. The highest average power density obtained with a MEA solution as the electrolyte was 4.5 mW/m², significantly higher than that with water as the electrolyte (0.28 mW/m²).

In nature, ammonia occurs in soil from bacterial processes. It is also produced when plants, animals and animal wastes decay.

Chemists discover new way to harness energy from ammonia

November 11, 2021 By Tatum Lyles Flick For news media 

A research team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has identified a new way to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas through a process that could be a step toward ammonia replacing carbon-based fuels.

The discovery of this technique, which uses a metal catalyst and releases, rather than requires, energy, was reported Nov. 8 in Nature Chemistry and has received a provisional patent from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

The scientists were excited to find that the addition of ammonia to a metal catalyst containing the platinum-like element ruthenium spontaneously produced nitrogen, which means that no added energy was required. Instead, this process can be harnessed to produce electricity, with protons and nitrogen gas as byproducts. In addition, the metal complex can be recycled through exposure to oxygen and used repeatedly, all a much cleaner process than using carbon-based fuels.

Ammonia has been burned as a fuel source for many years. During World War II, it was used in automobiles, and scientists today are considering ways to burn it in engines as a replacement for gasoline, particularly in the maritime industry. However, burning ammonia releases toxic nitrogen oxide gases.

The new reaction avoids those toxic byproducts. If the reaction were housed in a fuel cell where ammonia and ruthenium react at an electrode surface, it could cleanly produce electricity without the need for a catalytic converter.

“For a fuel cell, we want an electrical output, not input,” Wallen says. “We discovered chemical compounds that catalyze the conversion of ammonia to nitrogen at room temperature, without any applied voltage or added chemicals.”

Submitted: 06 June 2016Accepted: 11 July 2016Published Online: 26 July 2016

Acoustic levitation of a large solid sphere

Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 044101 (2016);  A. B. Andrade^1, a),  Anne L. Bernassau², and Julio C. Adamowski³

We demonstrate that acoustic levitation can levitate spherical objects much larger than the acoustic wavelength in air. The acoustic levitation of an expanded polystyrene sphere of 50 mm in diameter, corresponding to 3.6 times the wavelength, is achieved by using three 25 kHz ultrasonic transducers arranged in a tripod fashion. In this configuration, a standing wave is created between the transducers and the sphere. The axial acoustic radiation force generated by each transducer on the sphere was modeled numerically as a function of the distance between the sphere and the transducer. The theoretical acoustic radiation force was verified experimentally in a setup consisting of an electronic scale and an ultrasonic transducer mounted on a motorized linear stage. The comparison between the numerical and experimental acoustic radiation forces presents a good agreement.We would like to thank the Brazilian funding agencies FAPESP (Grant Nos. 2014/24159-1 and 2015/50408-1) and CNPq.

Why Liquid Nitrogen Cars Are Better Than Electric Autos In the meantime, electric cars powered by lead-acid batteries are the only relatively affordable and readily available zero-emission vehicles on the market. Despite their reputation as the most environmentally friendly alternative to smog-belching, gasoline-powered cars, electric cars offer chronically poor performance and present pollution and safety problems of their own, UW researchers contend.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen^[1]) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions.^[2] Fuel cells are different from most batteries in requiring a continuous source of fuel and oxygen (usually from air) to sustain the chemical reaction, whereas in a battery the chemical energy usually comes from metals and their ions or oxides^[3] that are commonly already present in the battery, except in flow batteries. Fuel cells can produce electricity continuously for as long as fuel and oxygen are supplied.

1. Saikia, Kaustav; Kakati, Biraj Kumar; Boro, Bibha; Verma, Anil (2018). “Current Advances and Applications of Fuel Cell Technologies”. Recent Advancements in Biofuels and Bioenergy Utilization. Singapore: Springer. pp. 303–337. doi:10.1007/978-981-13-1307-3_13. ISBN 978-981-13-1307-3.
2. ^ Khurmi, R. S. (2014). Material Science. S. Chand & Company. ISBN 9788121901468.
3. ^ Schmidt-Rohr, K. (2018). “How Batteries Store and Release Energy: Explaining Basic Electrochemistry”, J. Chem. Educ., 95: 1801–1810. 

Researchers harvest energy from radio waves to power wearable devices

Date:March 25, 2021Source:Penn StateSummary:From microwave ovens to Wi-Fi connections, the radio waves that permeate the environment are not just signals of energy consumed but are also sources of energy themselves. An international team of researchers has developed a way to harvest energy from radio waves to power wearable devices.

The researchers recently published their method in Materials Today Physics.

According to Cheng, current energy sources for wearable health-monitoring devices have their place in powering sensor devices, but each has its setbacks. Solar power, for example, can only harvest energy when exposed to the sun. A self-powered triboelectric device can only harvest energy when the body is in motion.

“We don’t want to replace any of these current power sources,” Cheng said. “We are trying to provide additional, consistent energy.”

The researchers developed a stretchable wideband dipole antenna system capable of wirelessly transmitting data that is collected from health-monitoring sensors. The system consists of two stretchable metal antennas integrated onto conductive graphene material with a metal coating. The wideband design of the system allows it to retain its frequency functions even when stretched, bent and twisted. This system is then connected to a stretchable rectifying circuit, creating a rectified antenna, or “rectenna,” capable of converting energy from electromagnetic waves into electricity. This electricity that can be used to power wireless devices or to charge energy storage devices, such as batteries and supercapacitors.

This rectenna can convert radio, or electromagnetic, waves from the ambient environment into energy to power the sensing modules on the device, which track temperature, hydration and pulse oxygen level. Compared to other sources, less energy is produced, but the system can generate power continuously — a significant advantage, according to Cheng.

“We are utilizing the energy that already surrounds us — radio waves are everywhere, all the time,” Cheng said. “If we don’t use this energy found in the ambient environment, it is simply wasted. We can harvest this energy and rectify it into power.”

Cheng said that this technology is a building block for him and his team. Combining it with their novel wireless transmissible data device will provide a critical component that will work with the team’s existing sensor modules.

“Our next steps will be exploring miniaturized versions of these circuits and working on developing the stretchability of the rectifier,” Cheng said. “This is a platform where we can easily combine and apply this technology with other modules that we have created in the past. It is easily extended or adapted for other applications, and we plan to explore those opportunities.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Penn State. Original written by Tessa M. Pick. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Jia Zhu, Zhihui Hu, Chaoyun Song, Ning Yi, Zhaozheng Yu, Zhendong Liu, Shangbin Liu, Mengjun Wang, Michael Gregory Dexheimer, Jian Yang, Huanyu Cheng. Stretchable wideband dipole antennas and rectennas for RF energy harvesting. Materials Today Physics, 2021; 18: 100377 DOI: 10.1016/j.mtphys.2021.100377

Converting Wi-Fi signals to electricity with new 2-D materials

Device made from flexible, inexpensive materials could power large-area electronics, wearables, medical devices, and more.Rob Matheson | MIT News OfficePublication Date:January 28, 2019

Earth Battery

Preparation You can make earth batteries from electrodes that are made of metals that can conduct an electric current through each other. These metals can work when they’re in the ground itself, giving this type of battery its name. You will need to be outside during a time when there isn’t any hazardous weather such as heavy rain or thunderstorms.

You’ll also need 12 copper nails (or rods) that will be placed in the ground, 12 galvanized aluminum nails (or rods), copper wire and high value capacitors. In addition, you’ll need a voltmeter and wire cutters. You can also optionally use measuring tape, aluminum foil and a compass for more refined calculations when creating your battery.

Before digging in your yard, make sure you have permission from local utilities or others who own the property. For safety reasons, you may even consider only digging a few inches deep.

Making To make the earth electrodes, use the wire cutters to remove about 1.5 inches of insulation from the copper wire. Wrap the strips of wire around the aluminum and copper nails. Then, you insert the the electrodes and attach multimeter leads to them. Set the multimeter to either DC or AC depending on current you plan to use.

To create the simplest earth battery, a single-cell kind, you can start by nailing one copper nail and one aluminum nail in the ground several feet apart. Connect them using your copper wire. Make sure that the wire is wound tightly and securely around the heads of each of the nails. Check the multimeter to see if you can read current.

Wrapping aluminum foil tightly around the wires can give you a more thorough way of sending charge between the nails. To create a more complicated, multiple-cell battery, you can use all 12 aluminum and copper cells arranged with one connected to the other in a series circuit alternating between aluminum and copper. Each connected pair of nails is a cell in this case.

Because the power of an earth battery depends upon the ion content of the earth’s soil, it only works in some parts of the land. The natural electric currents that flow through the ground from iron and other ionic metals in the ground can create natural electricity.