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Proof-of-Concept of a Zinc-Silver Battery for the Extraction of Energy from a Concentration Difference

Author

Listed:
  • Massimo Marino

    (Dipartimento di Matematica, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Saldini 50, 20133 Milano, Italy)

  • Lorenza Misuri

    (Dipartimento di Matematica, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Saldini 50, 20133 Milano, Italy)

  • Andrea Carati

    (Dipartimento di Scienze della Salute, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, via Cadore 48,20900 Monza, Italy)

  • Doriano Brogioli

    (Dipartimento di Matematica, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Saldini 50, 20133 Milano, Italy)

Abstract

The conversion of heat into current can be obtained by a process with two stages. In the first one, the heat is used for distilling a solution and obtaining two flows with different concentrations. In the second stage, the two flows are sent to an electrochemical cell that produces current by consuming the concentration difference. In this paper, we propose such an electrochemical cell, working with water solutions of zinc chloride. The cell contains two electrodes, made respectively of zinc and silver covered by silver chloride. The operation of the cell is analogous to that of the capacitive mixing and of the “mixing entropy battery”: the electrodes are charged while dipped in the concentrated solution and discharged when dipped in the diluted solution. The cyclic operation allows us to extract a surplus of energy, at the expense of the free energy of the concentration difference. We evaluate the feasibility of such a cell for practical applications and find that a power up to 2 W per m 2 of the surface of the electrodes can be achieved.

Suggested Citation

  • Massimo Marino & Lorenza Misuri & Andrea Carati & Doriano Brogioli, 2014. "Proof-of-Concept of a Zinc-Silver Battery for the Extraction of Energy from a Concentration Difference," Energies, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-20, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:6:p:3664-3683:d:37059
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Arenas, Luis F. & Loh, Adeline & Trudgeon, David P. & Li, Xiaohong & Ponce de León, Carlos & Walsh, Frank C., 2018. "The characteristics and performance of hybrid redox flow batteries with zinc negative electrodes for energy storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 992-1016.
    2. Brogioli, Doriano & La Mantia, Fabio & Yip, Ngai Yin, 2019. "Energy efficiency analysis of distillation for thermally regenerative salinity gradient power technologies," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 1034-1045.
    3. Lin, Jian & Wu, Nianyuan & Li, Li & Xie, Meina & Xie, Shan & Wang, Xiaonan & Brandon, Nigel & Sun, Yifei & Chen, Jincan & Zhao, Yingru, 2022. "Performance and parameter optimization of a capacitive salinity/heat engine for harvesting salinity difference energy and low grade heat," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 283-293.
    4. Carati, A. & Marino, M. & Brogioli, D., 2015. "Thermodynamic study of a distiller-electrochemical cell system for energy production from low temperature heat sources," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(P1), pages 984-993.

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