I came across this Table for the surface area of (silver) colloidal
nanoparticles at various concentrations:
http://www.silver-rcolloids.com/Tables/SurfaceArea.PDF
It got me thinking about trying to better verbalize the anomalous
effects of higher concentrations of "excitonic" nanoparticles - when
being employed as substitute, or virtual, electrodes. Certain colloids
when suspended in a liquid can be excited by either photonics,
ultrasonics, RF or magnetic induction or various combinations of these.
A virtual-electrolysis-cell, so to speak. Silver itself may not be
useful for this concept, it just happened to have this handy table.
Interesting things happen on "active" surfaces or interfaces...
especially with catalysts and even more so with semiconductor catalysts
under some kind of irradiation which triggers the bandgap potential.
Some have complained that "nano" as a catchword is being over-hyped
these days. Maybe - but not here. This seems to be the direct route to
higher efficiency in electrochemistry; but so far the "free energy" of
reactions has not been proven to be translated into absolute free energy
(by definition)... unless, that is, the reaction is not truly
reversible. There is more to this than semantics, hopefully... but most
of all, have you ever seen the suggestion of using colloids as "virtual
electrodes"?
That seems unique. The case can be made that one narrow class of
reaction called "superoxidation" is not reversible, or more specifically
extracts more heat energy on formation than is being input
electromechanically; and then may be naturally induced to take a
differing (branching) pathway on reversal, so that the reaction appears
to offer a potential of extracting ambient energy.
So much for all that doublespeak ... but it may set the table for an
eventual understanding of how to use surface catalysts to extract
ambient energy in metastable chemicals, and store that chemical energy
for later use - while at the same time getting free "air conditioning".
IOW the perfect version of Maxwell's Demon.
A 1-10 nm diameter colloid suspended in a liquid can present lots of
surface area. How much? For a 10 nm diameter colloid - the surface area
pi x d^2 = 314 sq nm -- or from the table above we can see that at 15
ppm a liter of water will have over 6 square meters of exposed surface
if the colloid is one nm diameter, which is about 30 atoms of catalyst
per particle. This is also near the perfect size for excitonic effects:
at least it appears so from studying that literature - so if the
catalyst is also a semiconductor, then it may undergo efficient bandgap
transitions or anomalous QM effects on external stimulation.
The usable voltage potential may be tied to a particular band-gap. For
instance the reduction potential between H2O and HOOH is matched closely
by the band gap of MnO2.
Fifteen parts per million is a low concentration comparatively. Salt in
ocean water is up to 35,000 ppm or 3.5% but that is ionic, not
colloidal, which is more difficult to achieve.
However, if we were somehow able to bring the catalyst in question up to
Fifteen parts per thousand of a true colloidal particulate, which is
1.5% of the liquid volume(i.e water), then the effective surface area in
a liter of water is looking like a good sized yard (at least on the West
Coast) - well over an acre. Not bad for (virtual)electrodes in a small
electrolytic cell.
Stated another way - if nature presents even a tiny thermodynamic
asymmetry - such as superoxidation - a reaction (and perhaps the only
one in nature) which is not-quite reversible - then net extractable
energy will vary with available surface area. If we are then able to
multiply the tiny excess by an enormous area and very high reaction
rate: usable net energy could be available as in the classic Maxwell's
demon but optimized in the form of a storable monopropellant.
Jones
