From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Fri Dec 27 2002 - 08:15:21 MST
The inventive name of such a simple device, inspires the Star Trekian
vocularist in me to see if there is further use for such a device. Maybe
using a 'protonic semiconductor' on water, or hydrogen gas, might make
hydrogen more affordable? In the former an electrolysis method, in the
later, a booster for fuel cells. Answer: probably not, and yet?
<A HREF="http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993209">http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993209>
<<Surrounding every power line with a heating element is one option. But
Working with a consortium of US and Canadian power companies, he has
It runs off small power units placed along the lines every 100 kilometres or
Protonic semiconductor
The key to the system is that frozen water is one of the few natural
As well as transporting charge through the ice, the movement of protons can
The possible consequences of this are most obvious at the surface of an ice
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5
: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:55 MST
Victor Petrenko, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, thinks he has a
smarter idea - use the ice itself as the element.
developed a system that sends high-frequency electrical signals along the
cables to create a current in the ice build-up and melt it.
so. The signal does not reduce electricity transmission through the cables,
and because it uses around 50 watts per 100 kilometres of line it should cost
a fraction of what it normally takes to keep the lines clear.
materials that act as a "protonic" semiconductor. In conventional
semiconductors such as silicon, current flows as a stream of electrons, but
in ice, current is carried by hydrogen ions - protons - which jump between
water molecules in the ice lattice.
cause the water molecules to rotate within the lattice. This means that the
flow of charge can alter ice's mechanical properties.
crystal, where the top layer of water molecules are exposed to the air. Here
the boundary is coated with an extremely thin "quasi-liquid" layer of
jostling water molecules. At about -157 °C this layer is only about one
molecule thick, but as the temperature rises it grows thicker, reaching about
one micrometre at 0 °C. >>