Need atleast 1.3 volts of current for electrolysis to work
Example solar panels he showed: 3 panels, each with a 2-row, 5-per-row arrangement
pn junction = diode = current can flow in 2 ways.
Electrons moving through a pn junction = sledding-hill analogy
Electrons slide down the hill (go between either end of the gap), releasing energy. Need energy to get pack up and redo the process; this energy is provided by photovoltaic energy striking the solar cell
Stack a whole bunch of fuel cells in series, then put some fuel-cell-banks in paralell, since each individual cell provides
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Regular electricity:
Hook up batteries or solar cells in paralell - no voltage increase, but a current increase
Hook up batteries or cells in series: no current increase, but a voltage increase
power = voltage * current
Voltage - kind of like how high you put your water tower (how much pressure)
Current - kind of like water flowing through a pipe (how much flow)
Different electric applications require primarily one or the other
10^19 charges = coulomb
1 coulomb per second = 1 amp
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Solar cells expensive; pay back over the course of relatively few years
PROVIDED, that local municipality supports "net metering", where your electricity meter runs backward when your solar array pumps power into the grid; this makes the payoff time quicker
Utilities don't want this cutting into their business
Big Oil funding solar research; they want to get in on the "next big thing"
---How does NanoPower relate to space colonization?
* Most of our stuff is low-orbit, so that's what we focus on; so even when we go out of low-Earth orbit, we use similar equipment.
* Air-generation systems would be very important to longterm space exploration; a problem we're more worried about than power generation
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Radioisotope problem: A lot of energy, but we have to work on the terms of that radioisotope's half-life.
Spontaneously emits; no need to trigger it.
Only way to improve current is to have more mass
Need to produce many of these radioisotopes in a reactor
May still be useful at the lower current-rates of the second half-life
Decay in a regular pattern, so we can design accordingly.
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Nanotubes: Some are metallic (normally conductive); some are semiconductors (unless you dope them, or shine light on them, often aren;t incredibly conductive.)
If we could make a batch of exactly identical nanotubes; we'd reach the Holy Grail of nanotech.
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Steam reforming: pump steam through a fossil fuel; liberates the hydrogen, with CO2 as the byproduct.
However, the CO2 is trapped and used for industrial processes rather than pumped into the air
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How are solar cells produced?
Different method:
polymer, silicon, 3 5 (3rd +5th column of periodic table, like gallium arsenide)
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silicon-type: a bunch of boron atoms on surface of silicion; put that into a furnace; this speeds up the diffusion of the other half of the pn junction; so it "bakes in" the pn junction.
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polymer-type: paint a negative polymer and a positive polymer on in alternating layers
NanoPower's advantage comes in making these other technologies more efficient and cheaper
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Ethical debates with nanomaterials: toxicity concerns are the big one
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Aren't nanotubes expensive b/c they're a new technology
Some types are, some types aren't (You can use laser vaporization, or you can burn stuff). It depends on what quality you need for the application in question.
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Problem: waste with drained batteries that need to be disposed of. This is a real problem.
Lots of military equipment that goes through batteries like crazy, for instance.
Are flammable materials in batteries, but you could be aerosoling dangerous chemicals that were in the battery.
quantum dot = nano-scale piece of a semiconducting material. Rule sof macroscopic materials no longer really explain what going on; so we have to use quantum mechanics
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