Stretching Old Material Yields New Results for Energy- and Environment-related Devices

[OKIsItJustMe]

I love this kind of discovery…

http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=119875&org=NSF&from=news

Press Release 11-123

Stretching Old Material Yields New Results for Energy- and Environment-related Devices

Stretching could improve efficiency of material used in batteries, fuel cells and water purification

June 21, 2011

Researchers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. recently found a way to improve electricity generating fuel cells, potentially making them more efficient, powerful and less expensive. Specifically, they discovered a way to speed up the flow and filtering of water or ions, which are necessary for fuel cells to operate.

Simply put, the researchers stretched Nafion, a polymer electrolyte membrane, or PEM, commonly used in fuel cells and increased the speed at which it selectively filters substances from ions and water.

The resulting process could be important to a number of energy and environment-related applications such as any of several industrial processes that involve filtering, including improving batteries in cars, water desalination and even the production of artificial muscles for robots.

The journal Nature Materials published the results in its June 19 issue in the article, "Linear coupling of alignment with transport in a polymer electrolyte membrane," by Jing Li, Jong Keun Park, Robert B. Moore and Louis A. Madsen, all with the chemistry department in the College of Science and the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute at Virginia Tech.

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