Ice Could Generate Electricity, Making it a Low-Cost Source of Energy
It is a well -known fact that water and electricity do not mix, but new research suggests that ice is a flexoelectric material – which, in laymen, means that it can produce electricity.
It is unlikely that you can save a lot in terms of household invoices by rubbing two ice cubes together, but it has been shown that the flexion or deformation of another ice sheet can generate an electrical load. Not only could this open the way to new technology, but it could improve our understanding of lightning and other natural phenomena, according to researchers written in Nature physics.
“We discovered that ice generates an electrical load in response to mechanical constraint at all temperatures,” said Xin Wen, member of the ICN2 oxide nanophysics group and one of the main researchers involved in the study, in a press release.
Ice electricity
Although the load produced from ice alone can be sufficient to have an impact on natural phenomena like lightning, it is too small to be incorporated into electronic devices. However, a later article published in Nature materials sUggets “doping” ice with sodium chloride (or salt) increases its flexoelectric coefficient – the capacity of the material to produce an electrical load – 1,000 times.
“The strong flexoelectricity of saline ice brings the vision of ice power to a step of reality, and can also be relevant to the electrical activity of the terrestrial activity covered with ice and the iced ocean worlds such as Europa or Enfeludus, wrote the authors of the study.
Learn more: Could we use volcanoes to make electricity?
Generate an electric load
The ice is not piezoelectric, which means that it does not develop a load when it is placed under pressure. However, by folding thin ice sheets, scientists have been able to generate an electrical load and demonstrate a level of flexoelectricity that researchers describe as “comparable” to piezoelectric materials such as titanium dioxide and strontium titanate, materials often used in sensors and capacitors.
“Flexoelectricity has two contributions: ionic (small changes in atoms) and electronic (changes in electronic clouds),” said co-author Anthony Mannino, a doctorate. Student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute of Advanced Computer Sciences (IACS) at Stony Brook University. “In ordinary ice, the electronic part dominates – when the ice is folded, the electrons redistribute to create a polarization while the atomic configuration remains relatively rigid.”
Researchers say that this process could help explain how lightning is formed. Because even if it is known that electric potentials accumulate in steree shots when small particles of ice collided with larger graupel particles (or a soft hail), the way in which these particles become loaded remain a mystery. Now it appears that an electrical load could be generated when the particles are irregularly deformed.
The team also discovered a second method to produce electricity: ferroelectricity. At exceptionally low temperatures of 113 negative degrees Celsius (negative of 171.4 degrees fahrenheit) and below, a thin “ferroelectric” layer allows the surface of the ice to acquire natural electrical polarization.
“In ferroelectric ice, the orientation of water molecules allows the ionic part to play a more important role, so that electrons and ions significantly contribute to polarization,” said Mannino.
A torque of power
Appearing in the form of snowflakes, gel and glaciers, ice is one of the most abundant materials on the planet – it represents around 10% of the surface of the earth. The problem is that the ice itself does not seem to be the most effective in producing electricity.
This changes with the addition of sodium fluoride. A solution containing 25% salt had the capacity to generate the electrical load of pure ice and 1,000,000 times more than salt alone. The reason for this lies in the movement of salt water when the ice is folded – a process that unlocks water molecules and salt ions, allowing them to pass compressed areas to stretched areas.
There are some problems to grow back – efficiency considerably drops over time, for example – but researchers say that it could offer an alternative material for low -cost sensors and energy assessment devices. As the researchers wrote, “the search for renewable, sustainable and low cost energy is among the most urgent challenges for modern society”.
Learn more: Arctic lightning linked to climate change
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