Measuring the Optical Power of your LED Purpose of This Note When performing experiments with dye solar cells, light is focused on the cell and its current response is measured. The generated current depends strongly on the intensity of the light. In order to calculate the efficiency of a solar cell, the optical power of Read more about The Optical Power of your LED[…]
Corrosion: Fundamentals and Experimental Methods Registration is now open for the 2015 Corrosion Short Course being held at Penn State University Park Campus June 7-12th. The course, now in it’s 19th year, will cover the fundamentals of corrosion and various electrochemical techniques. Lectures and laboratories will be used to illustrate how electrochemical techniques are applied, Read more about Penn State University Corrosion Short Course[…]
Crystals reveal the answer: Detecting drugs with a quartz crystal microbalance Balancing in the heat A novel type of high temperature quartz crystal disc could make the perfect detector for small, portable gas chromatography (GC) systems, say US researchers. Such quartz crystal discs form the centrepiece of quartz crystal microbalances (QCMs), which are widely used Read more about Detecting Drugs with QCM[…]
Philadelphia, PA, January 27, 2015 – Gamry Instruments is proud to once again sponsor the EIS (Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy) Short Course. The spring 2015 course is being held April 20-24 2015 in Houston, TX.
This application note discusses electrochemical measurements on lithium ion batteries. Theory and general setup of lithium ion batteries are explained. Important parameters for characterizing batteries are described.
In addition, various experiments on coin cells are performed. They show how to gain information about a battery’s performance, e.g. capacity and voltage limits as well as long time behavior.
We began with a simple LPR (Polarization Resistance) experiment. The results are shown to the right. Analysis of the data within 5 mV of Eoc gave the line shown in red. It corresponds to an Rp value of 687 ohm. Using the default beta values of 120 mV/decade yields a corrosion rate of 5.77 mpy in this electrolyte. This estimate can be refined if better estimates of the beta values are known. More about this shortly!
Converting chemical energy into electrical energy can be done in different ways, but for chemical energy stored in various fuels like hydrogen, electrochemical fuel cells are the most direct, and have the potential to be very efficient.
The electrochemistry side of fuel cells is rather straightforward. Hydrogen, possibly with some carbon, on one side combines with oxygen on the other to produce water and possibly carbon dioxide. The half reactions are separated so that the energy difference between reagents and products can be harvested as electrical energy.
Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy can identify problems that limit a fuel cell’s efficiency, by helping to optimize a cell, it can determine anodic and cathodic process mechanisms. EIS is particularly good for measuring the equivalent series resistance of fuel cells, a major source of power loss in a low impedance device. Because of the modeling capability of EIS, you can also extract information on kinetics and mass transport in the fuel cell, both of which are crucial factors to fuel cell performance. EIS is useful in both research and QC applications. EIS of fuel cells runs into some of the same low impedance device and setup limitations that also show up in batteries and supercapacitors.
IMAGE COURTESY OF INSIDE EVS
The first thing you notice about the Mirai, Toyota’s new $62,000, four-door family sedan, is that it’s no Camry, an international symbol of bland conformity. First there are the in-your-face, angular grilles on the car’s front end. These deliver air to (and cool) a polymer fuel-cell stack under the hood. Then there’s the wavy, layered sides, meant to evoke a droplet of water. It looks like it was driven off the set of the Blade Runner sequel.
Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy by Mark E. Orazem and Bernard Tribollet now available in Chinese from Chemical Industry Press (CIP) Publishers. This book provides the background and training suitable for application of impedance spectroscopy to varied applications and is an excellent textbook for graduate students in electrochemistry, materials science, and chemical engineering. 马克•欧瑞姆和伯纳德•特瑞博勒特的专著 «电化学阻抗谱»一书，目前由中国化学工业出版社（CIP）出版。这本书提供了阻抗谱的详细背景和知识、提供了具体的应用实例，对于电化学，材料科学和化学工程的研究生来说，是一步难得的培训教材。
Article now available at Springer by A. Robert Hillman Abstract In its simplest manifestation, the electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) is a relatively new device for executing a classical technique, electrogravimetry. The advantages it brought were in situ applicability (notwithstanding prior misconceptions regarding damping by a contacting fluid), exceptional sensitivity and dynamic capability, thereby Read more about The EQCM: electrogravimetry with a light touch[…]
October 7, 2014 By Nanalyze
The world is addicted to crude oil. Every day we consume around 90 million barrels or 3.8 billion gallons of crude oil, 84% of which is used for energy production. The other 16% is used as a raw material to create a multitude of other chemical products such as pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. But the need for crude oil as a feedstock may begin diminishing over time as disruptive technologies begin to mature. Companies are developing alternatives to using crude to manufacture chemicals, companies such as Genomatica, which has delivered synthetic organisms that represent the industry’s first commercial bio-based process for producing a high-volume intermediate chemical without the need for crude. This process called GENO BDO produced 5 million pounds of Butanediol (BDO) in 2012 (about 100 truckloads sold and shipped) and has now been licensed by the world’s #1 producer of BDO, BASF. Another company looking to create an intermediate chemical using environmentally friendly feedstock instead of crude oil is Liquid Light.
About Liquid Light
Founded in 2009, New Jersey based Liquid Light has taken in $23.5 million in funding so far from the likes of VantagePoint Capital Partners, BP Ventures, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and Osage University Partners. Liquid Light first unveiled their electrochemical production method for making chemicals in March of this year which is based on technology licensed from Princeton University. The event was highlighted in an MIT Technology Review article titled “A Cheaper Route to Making Chemicals from CO2“ which contained the following statement:
Liquid Light’s electrochemical production method for chemicals would be an appealing substitute for current petroleum-based methods, particularly for chemicals with oxygen in them, says Gary Dirks, a former BP executive and a scientific advisor to Liquid Light. “You get products that are not easy to get from oil-based hydrocarbons in a much simpler process and at lower cost,” he says.
The production method is “lower cost” because it uses waste carbon dioxide as a feedstock instead of more expensive current feedstocks used such as natural gas, crude oil, or corn.
Gamry will be holding a Workshop at the ECS Meeting in Cancun, Mexico. If you do EIS on very low impedance or very high impedance samples then you should attend Gamry’s workshop at the ECS meeting tomorrow. This workshop will cover precautions needed for analyzing very low impedance samples such as batteries and fuel cells as Read more about Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy of Difficult Samples[…]
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