Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/973

 The "Ideal" Battery

By A. R. MacPherson

��TO the experimenter in the field of electro-chemistry there is much unexplored knowledge which in time will prove of inestimable value to the chemistry of commerce, particularly in the methods of generating electricity through chemical actions, which at the present day, though apparently satisfac- tory, are very inefficient. There are scores of patents on devices for generat- ing electricity chemically, but the ma- jority are lacking in the fundamental principles necessary to the attainment of an efficient commercial product.

The primary cell to be realized is one in which carbon and oxygen are the ele- ments consumed, a much greater amount of energy being obtained if these two elements unite, with the production of an electric current. No other form of energy, such as heat or polarization, to impair the efficiency of the cell, would be manifest. The problem is to find an electrolyte which wall dissolve the car- bon as ions and to construct the neces- sary oxygen electrode; thus, the two op-

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���posite poles of the cell would carry on the reaction through the intervening electrolyte and no local action would be produced. All of the energy of the cell

���Diagram illustrating the arrangement and connections of plates for oxidizing process

��View showing Jablockkoff 's cell arranged over a furnace

would be dissipated if the carbon and oxygen acted directly on each other.

The author has carried out a series of experiments in this field involving the production of an electric current through the action of an electrolyte on zinc plates, the carbons forming the positive pole. Only the carbon plates were acted upon, in that the oxygen stored up with- in the pores of the carbon was set free, this action considerably increasing the current strength of the battery.

The oxygen was impregnated in the pores by an oxidizing process in which the battery of carbon and zinc plates was immersed in a solution consisting of chromic acid, chrome alum, and sul- phuric acid, the plates being connected in parallel to an outside source of cur- rent giving about twenty amperes. Af- ter allowing the current to run through the cells for fifteen or twenty minutes the battery was removed from the solu- tion, washed, and immersed in the elec- trolyte, which was a simple salt solution. The E. AI. F. produced for a short pe- riod was more than double the strength of the regular action in which the car- bons had not received this oxidizing treatment. It is probable that the salt solution acts on the zinc, releasing hy-

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