Dipartimento di Scienze della Salute, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Via Cadore 48, Monza (MB) 20900, Italy.
J Colloid Interface Sci. 2013 Oct 1;407:457-66. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2013.06.050. Epub 2013 Jul 2.
The "capacitive mixing" (CAPMIX) technique is an emerging technology aimed at the extraction of energy from salinity differences, e.g. between sea and river waters. CAPMIX benefits from the voltage rise that takes place between two electrodes dipped in a saline solution when its salt concentration is changed. Several kinds of electrodes have been proposed so far: activated carbon materials (Brogioli, 2009), membrane-based ion-selective electrodes (Sales et al., 2010), and battery electrodes (Biesheuvel and van der Wal, 2010). The power production mainly depends on two properties of each single electrode: the amplitude of the potential rise upon salinity change, and the potential in the high-salinity solution. The various electrode materials that have been used returned different values of the two parameters, and hence to different power productions. In this paper, we apply electrokinetic and electrochemical models to qualitatively explain the experimentally observed behaviors of various materials under different experimental conditions. The analysis allows to devise techniques for tailoring new materials, particularly suited for the CAPMIX technique.
“电容混合”（CAPMIX）技术是一种新兴的技术，旨在从盐度差异中提取能量，例如在海水和河水之间。CAPMIX 得益于当盐浓度变化时浸入盐溶液中的两个电极之间发生的电压升高。到目前为止，已经提出了几种类型的电极：活性炭材料（Brogioli，2009 年）、基于膜的离子选择性电极（Sales 等人，2010 年）和电池电极（Biesheuvel 和 van der Wal，2010 年）。电能的产生主要取决于每个单个电极的两个特性：盐度变化时电势升高的幅度，以及高盐溶液中的电势。已使用的各种电极材料返回了两个参数的不同值，因此产生了不同的电能。在本文中，我们应用电动和电化学模型来定性地解释在不同实验条件下各种材料的实验观察到的行为。该分析允许设计用于定制新材料的技术，特别是适合 CAPMIX 技术的材料。
