So rather than choosing or creating a material, “do[ing] something, do[ing] something to that, and then do[ing] something to that”, I decided to utilize a material in its native form and do stuff with it. We recently bought de-icing salt (calcium chloride specifically) for our front sidewalk in preparation for the winter and a few things came to mind:
With an abundance of this solution underfoot for a majority of the wintertime and a curiosity as to what else could potentially serve as a battery, I’ve been toying with the calcium chloride solution as my material.
If any sort of power could be generated from a reaction leveraging this solution, there are a few interesting applications that could arise, especially given the temporal and circumstantial existence of the material, its presence serves as a switch for its own reaction.
My first inclination is to use this energy for the creation of heat (or more heat since its interaction with water is an exothermic reaction). After all the presence of snow/slush generally implies cold weather. A ready circuit embedded in the roadway could generate heat and expedite the melting process. Once melted the circuit breaks. Or embedded on a shoe one can imagine environmentally triggered boot warmers.
So the first test was to see if this would generate anything utilizing similar materials as to that of the lemon battery (zinc and copper electrodes). Perhaps if I could have recalled anything from general chemistry and redox reactions I may have stopped here, but alas, given a lack of theory why not try and see.
With a single circuit I was actually able to generate 0.6V, comparable to that of a similar volume of lemon juice concentrate. In series 1.5V. Looking good! My assumption then was that putting a few of these guys in series would result in something enough for a proof-of-concept… lighting an LED.
From there I set about embedding the circuit in a shoe. With holes in the soles already I sacrificed my red Chucks. 5 circuits were put into series embedded in the sole, with the leads terminating at the grommets on the side wall of the shoe. I was pretty proud of that novelty.
Then for the test: dunking. In a big bowl was mixed about two handfuls of salt with roughly 4 cups of water. In went the shoe. And out came… ~0.7V. Not even enough to light an LED.
So I’m not sure I’ve done anything really except realize that I really need to re-familiarize myself with even remedial chemistry before getting serious about being successful with anything like this.
My hunch, since that’s all it really is, is that unlike a series of lemons which are self contained units isolated from eachother, the solution in this case was shared across circuits, resulting in a big parallel pool of electron mush. The shoe circuit isn’t really in series at all as it turns out.
Conceptually I’m still interested in leaching existing behavior in our surround for other utilities. This one however may have been a bit of a fantasy…