Oxygen is supplied to the cathode, and within the cell, the fine coal powder undergoes electrochemical oxidation across an oxide membrane, yielding electricity directly – without any intermediate steam cycle or mechanical turbine.
What the fuck, it’s not boiling water this time
Whenever a new one of these pops up I look up what other smarter people think, and usually the limiting factor of these kind of “batteries” is making the membrane that separates the anion and cathode cheaply and reliably enough.
It says the coal has to be processed? And what happens to the by product?
The article literally answers this:
At the anode outlet, the high-purity carbon dioxide generated by the reaction is captured in situ and catalytically converted into valuable chemical feedstocks such as synthesis gas or mineralised into compounds like sodium bicarbonate.
Ah sorry, my brain glossed over that when I read it.
Man imagine how much meth you could buy by stealing one of these catalytic converters
The article was a little scarce in info, but from what I understood from looking it up (not much), since the byproduct is pure CO2 and O2, you can just use it to make stuff that other industries use. This is not unlike how fermentation to produce methanol produces a lot of CO2 that we use for other stuff.
Thank you for the break down. I don’t think the article really stuck when I read it.
