(PhysOrg.com) -- Chemists have solved the 150 year-old mystery of what gives the lead-acid battery, found under the bonnet of most cars, its unique ability to deliver a surge of current.
Lead-acid batteries are able to deliver the very large currents needed to start a car engine because of the exceptionally high electrical conductivity of the battery anode material, lead dioxide. However, even though this type of battery was invented in 1859, up until now the fundamental reason for the high conductivity of lead dioxide has eluded scientists.
A team of researchers from Oxford University, the University of Bath, Trinity College Dublin, and the ISIS neutron spallation source, have explained for the first time the fundamental reason for the high conductivity of lead dioxide.
A report of the research appears in this week’s Physical Review Letters.
‘The unique ability of lead acid batteries to deliver surge currents in excess of 100 amps to turn over a starter motor in an automobile depends critically on the fact that the lead dioxide which stores the chemical energy in the battery anode has a very high electrical conductivity, thus allowing large current to be drawn on demand,’ said Professor Russ Egdell of Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry, an author of the paper.
‘However the origin of conductivity in lead oxide has remained a matter of controversy. Other oxides with the same structure, such as titanium dioxide, are electrical insulators.’
Through a combination of computational chemistry and neutron diffraction, the team has demonstrated that lead dioxide is intrinsically an insulator with a small electronic band gap, but invariably becomes electron rich due to the loss of oxygen from the lattice, causing the material to be transformed from an insulator into a metallic conductor.
The researchers believe these insights could open up new avenues for the selection of improved materials for modern battery technologies.
Professor Egdell said: ‘The work demonstrates the power of combining predictive materials modelling with state-of-the-art experimental measurements.’
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Nanobanano
2.1 / 5 (29) Dec 19, 2011But wait a minute.
That CAN'T be right.
We were using a technology without fullyunderstanding it!
There weren't 50 peer reviewed papers explaining and proving why it worked?
This was not approved by the mainstream peer review trolls in the past 150 years. This is an outrage!
I thought that's why nobody believes Rossi's device works, because there aren't 50 peer reviewed papers agreeing with the results, the scientific community discarded it.
Once again, it shows that things can be useful without a full and complete understanding: Fire was used for cooking and metallurgy before any theory of atomic matter, nevermind electrons, existed.
Rossi deserves another look.
NASA has also allegedly filed a cold fusion patent of it's own, but I haven't been able to verify that...
Shootist
4.3 / 5 (19) Dec 19, 2011That said, I do agree regarding 'cold fusion', there is some funny business going on and it should be investigated.
coquillionxxx
4.9 / 5 (13) Dec 19, 2011I dare say that this is a specious argument based on false analogy. Do we have to understand the mechanism of Rossi's invention for it to work? No. Do we need peer reviewed papers showing net energy gain to the exclusion of less exotic mechanisms of generation? I should hope so.
DougCoulter
4.6 / 5 (14) Dec 19, 2011Parsec
4.2 / 5 (9) Dec 19, 2011When scientists are shown a black box in which a miracle is said to happen inside, with out being able to open the box and see what is happening, they would be fools not to be skeptical. In addition, no viable suggested mechanism for generating the extra heat has been offered. I for one would dearly love cold fusion to work. But I am highly dubious from what I see.
rollin45
2.5 / 5 (8) Dec 19, 2011Ahhh, somewhat like Hansen and his hockey stick.. now I understand.
Callippo
1.4 / 5 (11) Dec 19, 2011The Foccardi and Piantelli published their findings routinely during last twenty years, they were completely documented and reported COP > 3. But scientists didn't move their fingers until Rossi had come and he claimed COP ~ 6. But does it really make such huge difference? The COP ~ 3 is still perpetuum mobile. Actually, even the COP ~ 1.001 would be worth of scientific study, because mainstream physics does care even about way more minute effects, if it gets the impression, it has something to do with gravitational waves and/or Higgs boson.
Callippo
1.6 / 5 (8) Dec 19, 2011Howhot
1 / 5 (6) Dec 19, 2011So yeah, the analogy to the lead/acid battery 150 years ago seems like a good one.
LEDman
4.8 / 5 (5) Dec 19, 2011If he is showing the devices (publicly) and offered them for sale, then in many countries he has already lost his ability to patent, so we may never know the truth.
DougCoulter
5 / 5 (3) Dec 19, 2011Some people even tried to dupe his work with what little info there was, and they did get heat - the amount you'd expect from a pure chemical reaction of H and Ni. That was considered a null result, but would explain his carefully guarded (from anyone who could check him) runs in "public".
MarkyMark
5 / 5 (5) Dec 20, 2011rawa1
1 / 5 (3) Dec 20, 2011http://newenergyt...rs.shtml
Actually it's disputable, whether the real interpreter would act differently. When client says, he don't want a public presentation, it's just just him, who is paying the whole show. If someone wants to find, whether E-Cat unit is working, he can simply buy it and makes sure for yourself.
Callippo
2.3 / 5 (3) Dec 20, 2011http://scitation....p;ref=no
"..A mechanism for conduction is proposed which assumes that lead dioxide is not of exact stoichiometric composition, but contains an excess of lead, which is considered to be dissociated into tetravalent lead ions and free electrons. The conductivity is due to the latter..."
Apparently, this mechanism has been known with many additional details before fifty years already. Is it exactly what the physicists and journalists are payed for?
KBK
1 / 5 (1) Jan 01, 2012It kinda relates to this issue of ..lead -in this report.
As usual, the intrepid will investigate ....and be silent.
Rightly so.
The ignorant and linear will be detractive and verbal. As per usual, according to their ignorance and will to remain so.
the problem is that the ignorant infect with their herd mentality. There is a bell curve for everything and then there is a small group of individuals who are well outside of it.
This is a normal thing, in all areas of this big world. There is a 'normal' group of genii, a 'bell curve of genius' that those who peruse this website..purport to look up to..
Well... there is a group, a smaller group, which exists ----beyond that. Nothing new there.
However,again...there is a lack of understanding of this 'normal' thing, among those who peruse this website....
In that group that beyond, in there...you will find the alchemists.