Electrochemical Energy Systems

Foundations, Energy Storage and Conversion

Artur Braun

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110561951
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences physiques
• Subtopic: Chimie physique et théorique

This book is for anyone interested in renewable energy for a sustainable future of mankind. Batteries, fuel cells, capacitors, electrolyzers and solar cells are explained at the molecular level and at the power plant level, in their historical development, in their economical and political impact, and social change. Cases from geophysics and astronomy show that electrochemistry is not confined to the small scale. Examples are shown and exercised.

1.Introduction

This book shall give you a very general overview of electrochemistry for energy storage and conversion. It will give also you an introduction in the general field of electrochemistry, including some more exotic and seemingly esoteric aspects of electrochemistry.

What is electrochemistry? I don’t want to provide you with a clear-cut definition of the term. There are many books on electrochemistry which you can buy, check out from the library or find online for free. I have no particular recommendation for you here. Since there are so many books you can check out for free, I hope you find the one which suits your needs, taste and interests. However, this book here follows the philosophy of a studium generale and you will find that it differs from all other books you find on electrochemistry.

At this very early stage of the book, I want to also issue a safety notice. This book will give you numerous inspirations on experiments that you can do in the laboratory, but experimental work bears the risk of accidents. You must therefore follow good laboratory practices when you deal with chemicals, electricity, machining tools and so on. Look for safety instructions, always obey them and never ignore them.

So, what is electrochemistry?

What is chemistry? That is an easier question. Chemistry deals with the chemical reactions between chemical elements, with passing on of electrons and maybe protons from one chemical element, atom and ion to another one; with reduction and oxidation processes of materials: chemical conversion of materials, either solid, liquid or gas. This is a quick and practical answer for what chemistry is. When you control these chemical reactions with electrical equipment, with cables, electrodes, electrolytes, then, I think, this is electrochemistry.

Well-known applications of electrochemistry are the batteries. Batteries store chemical energy and release it with an electric voltage as an electrical current which we use in daily gadgets like cell phones, cameras and many other portable electric devices. Watches, sensors and so on may be run by batteries. Electric vehicles (EVs) like the new Tesla car run on batteries.

For educational purposes, I have included in this book historical material [Leddy 2004], some of which dates back several hundreds of years. This material is well connected with names that have made it into physical and chemical terminology, such as Volta, Galvani, Ampere, Joule, Watt and so on. I believe it is important that the student readers who are interested in an academic degree understand and see examples how science and how knowledge evolves over time, times and ages.

As the views of the societies change over the decades and centuries, so does the perception of the science and technology. Scientific evolution is not only a struggle about right or wrong, but also a struggle about which theory fits the reality better. Those of you who will make it into an academic career will learn that not only the scientific argument but also the way how and by whom it is being brought forward is important for whether a scientific idea wins or not. This is even more important where science turns into technology and business and social change [Feynman 1955]. Sometimes, a new technology will not make it to the market unless society, represented for example by the government, subsidizes the new technology with incentives [Norberg-Bohm 2000].

Finally, I want to point out that it was good academic practice in all disciplines of arts, science and humanity to seriously allow for views and opinions, particularly with respect to controversial views and opinions. Scientific dispute is part of the essence of science. For example, there are, fortunately, still publications around with the title “Current Opinion,” not only in science but also in the field of law.

1.1Mobility and electromobility

Mobility is nowadays a keyword with positive and negative connotation. Here in this book on “electricity,” mobility stands certainly for the mobility of electric charge carriers, be it electrons, holes, ions and so on. Without mobility, the charge carriers cannot transport their charge and hence no electric current, no electric power and no mechanical action would be possible. The electromotive force (EMF, E.M.F., e.m.f., emf) would not come to action. Mobility thus stands for dynamics.

Mobility is also another expression for freedom. The freedom that you can go and that you can move everywhere you want is important in and symbolized by modern western society. This feeling of freedom is resembled for example by the electronic experimental music piece “Autobahn” by German pioneering electronic music group Kraftwerk [Buckely 2012, Nationalpost 2014, Schiller 2014]. The cover image (designed by Emil Schult, a graduate student of Joseph Beuys) of the single piece Autobahn shows an endless highway, the “Autobahn” in German nature setting along with electric power transmission lines.

Certainly, the freedom to endlessly moving around, the constitutional right and freedom to travel [Crusto 2008] needs also endless energy, either from gasoline in the tank of the car for the mobility or for the access to electric energy far away from the power plant – in German: Kraftwerk. Or you can sail with the wind in a modern air plane or on a boat.

Mobility is also an expression for the deployment of machinery and human workforce (stimulated mobility [Papatsiba 2006, Walsh 2010, Wilken 2017] or forced mobility [Beladi 2011, Kerbalek 2010, Lovelock 2016, Nica 2009, Zimmermann 2005]) and in so far can have a rather negative connotation. In this very same context, migration, a term well known in electric phenomena such as electrophoresis, has become also a term of time with respect to human migration [Dessalegne 2001] including forced migration [Lamar 2010].

Another aspect of freedom and mobility comes when I remember the late 1970s when the Walkman was invented [Braidwood 1981, Waysand 1984]. The Walkman was a small portable magnet tape cassette player; it was not much larger than the cassette itself and would play music to your earphones and headphones for several hours. For example, the recording capacity of one cassette would be 240 minutes. You could clip the Walkman to your belt or keep it in a pocket and listen to music while you are walking around in the city or in nature. Two small batteries were sufficient to power the Walkman.

Twenty years later, the iPod was invented. It had one-third of the weight of the Walkman and it could store 100–200 times more music pieces [Xu 2016]. The iPod was powered with even smaller batteries. The miniaturization of electronics to microelectronics [Braun 2017] for portable consumer products provided an incentive to make efforts in miniaturizing the power sources. To be able to listen to your favorite music everywhere you want without the need of being in a concert hall or at your own home, movie theater and entertainment center has consequences on the entire society and cultural development.

When American artist John Rand [Rand 1841] invented the paint tube over 150 years ago, he maybe did not anticipate that the impressionist painters would have the opportunity to leave their ateliers with their painting equipment and start painting anywhere outside where they wanted. Painters became mobile and we experience this today because an entirely new era of paintings became possible, as we can see in the art museums today. Great impressionist painter Pierre Auguste Renoir [Redaction 2012], born in 1841, remarked the significance of the invention of paint tubes for the development of art and impressionism:

Sans les peintures en tube, il n’y aurait eu ni Cézanne, ni Monet, ni Sisley ou Pissarro, rien de ce que les journalistes appellent “impressionnisme.”

Would you guess that Rand’s patent [Rand 1841] served as technical reference for a deferred action battery [Oestermeyer 1962]? Such kind of batteries is employed in hearing devices and in torpedoes, for example.

Eberle [Eberle 2012] and Von Helmolt et al. [Von Helmolt 2007] wrote status papers and opinion papers on the hydrogen mobility infrastructure from the perspective of engineers in the automotive industry. Now, in 2017, as I started writing this book, hydrogen mobility has become reality for the consumer.

1.1.1The fuel cell electric vehicle Hyundai ix35

In Figure 1.1, you see a fuel cell (FC) car that runs on hydrogen. It is a Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell from model year 2015 [Ashley 2012]. As you see from the top left panel in Figure 1.1, the car looks like a small sports utility v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgement
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The electrochemical double layer
• 3 The electrochemical cell
• 4 Batteries
• 5 Electroanalytical methods
• 6 Fuel cells
• 7 Solid electrolytes
• 8 Photoelectrochemical cells
• 9 Electricity in nature
• 10 Electricity and biology
• 11 Land use and power plants
• 12 Electrochemical engineering and reactor design
• 13 Reaching for the inner of the sun – by nuclear fusion
• Appendix Resistor Color Code
• Bibliography
• Index