{"id":2883,"date":"2025-01-08T10:11:16","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T10:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bullseye.ac\/blog\/?p=2883"},"modified":"2025-01-08T10:11:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T10:11:18","slug":"the-surprising-role-of-rust-in-sustainable-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bullseye.ac\/blog\/technology\/the-surprising-role-of-rust-in-sustainable-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surprising Role of Rust in Sustainable Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Number of words: 624<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rust is often associated with decay and disrepair, but scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University are looking at rust differently: as a means of generating electricity.Rust, after all, is nothing more than iron oxide. Thin films of it, as the scientists show in a new study, could be used to generate electricity when interacting with salt water. Combining metal compounds and salt water is a well-known way of conducting electricity, since chlorine and sodium ions can carry electrical currents. The process can even be replicated&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.homesciencetools.com\/article\/saltwater-circuit-project\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">in your kitchen<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the process at hand, developed by Caltech professor of chemistry Tom Miller and Dow Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern Franz Geiger, doesn&#8217;t feature any chemical reactions. Instead, the team focused on Newton&#8217;s 3rd Law\u2014for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction\u2014by converting the kinetic energy of moving salt water into electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This process is more commonly known as the electrokinetic effect and has been seen before in thin films of graphene, tightly bound in a carbon atom&#8217;s honeycomb lattice. At its best, the electrokinetic effect can generate electricity with around 30 percent efficiency\u2014that&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/technology\/infrastructure\/a28186403\/how-solar-panels-work\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">noticeably higher than modern solar panels<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;A similar effect has been seen in some other materials. You can take a drop of saltwater and drag it across graphene and see some electricity generated,&#8221; Miller says in a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2019-07-ultra-thin-layers-rust-electricity.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">press statement<\/a>.The problem with graphene is scaling up. It could be expensive to get enough graphene to generate enough current to be useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rust, on the other hand, is very easy to acquire.&#8221;It&#8217;s basically just rust on iron, so it&#8217;s pretty easy to make in large areas,&#8221; Miller says. &#8220;This is a more robust implementation of the thing seen in graphene.&#8221;While rust could carry electricity, it&#8217;s not the type of rust that grows on a disregarded boat. Naturally spreading rust is thick, too thick to be mass-produced, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/sciencing.com\/rust-spread-4613667.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">doesn&#8217;t spread evenly<\/a>. The rust involved with this project would have to be developed with consistency in a lab. To achieve that, the scientists turned to a process called physical vapor deposition (PVD). During a PVD, a material begins in a condensed phase, transitions to a vapor phase, and then is moved back to a thin film condensed phase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s another well-known process, currently used to make thin film solar panels. Here, PVD allowed the team to create thin films of rust a mere 10 nanometers thick, thousands of times thinner than a human hair.&#8221;The ions present in saltwater attract electrons in the iron beneath the layer of rust,&#8221; the team explains in their press statement. &#8220;As the saltwater flows, so do those ions, and through that attractive force, they drag the electrons in the iron along with them, generating an electrical current.&#8221; When flowed salt water over their rust-coated iron, the scientists found that it generated several tens of millivolts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;For perspective, plates having an area of 10 square meters each would generate a few kilowatts per hour\u2014enough for a standard U.S. home,&#8221; Miller says. &#8220;Of course, less demanding applications, including low-power devices in remote locations, are more promising in the near term.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the most obvious potential is for items that people already put in the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Tidal energy, or things bobbing in the ocean, like buoys, could be used for passive electrical energy conversion,&#8221; he says. &#8220;You have saltwater flowing in your veins in periodic pulses. That could be used to generate\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/electricity\/\">electricity<\/a>\u00a0for powering implants.&#8221;The vast majority of the planet&#8217;s water is salt water, making it a ripe target for scientists looking to generate energy. Recently, a team at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia developed a method of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/technology\/infrastructure\/a28355795\/solar-panels-saltwater-farming\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">using salt water to capture wasted heat<\/a>\u00a0from solar panels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Excerpted from <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/energy\/a28555278\/rust-electricity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/energy\/a28555278\/rust-electricity\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Number of words: 624 Rust is often associated with decay and disrepair, but scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University are looking at rust differently: as a means of generating electricity.Rust, after all, is nothing more than iron oxide. Thin films of it, as the scientists show in a new study, could be used to generate &#8230; <a title=\"The Surprising Role of Rust in Sustainable Technology\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/bullseye.ac\/blog\/technology\/the-surprising-role-of-rust-in-sustainable-technology\/\" aria-label=\"More on The Surprising Role of Rust in Sustainable Technology\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Surprising Role of Rust in Sustainable Technology - BullsEye<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bullseye.ac\/blog\/technology\/the-surprising-role-of-rust-in-sustainable-technology\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Surprising Role of Rust in Sustainable Technology - BullsEye\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Number of words: 624 Rust is often associated with decay and disrepair, but scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University are looking at rust differently: as a means of generating electricity.Rust, after all, is nothing more than iron oxide. 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