RADIAL COUNTERFLOW SHEAR ELECTROLYSIS

摘要

Coaxial disk armatures, counter-rotating through an axial magnetic field, act as electrolysis electrodes and high shear centrifugal impellers for an axial feed. The feed can be carbon dioxide, water, methane, or other substances requiring electrolysis. Carbon dioxide and water can be processed into syngas and ozone continuously, enabling carbon and oxygen recycling at power plants. Within the space between the counter-rotating disk electrodes, a shear layer comprising a fractal tree network of radial vortices provides sink flow conduits for light fractions, such as syngas, radially inward while the heavy fractions, such as ozone and elemental carbon flow radially outward in boundary layers against the disks and beyond the disk periphery, where they are recovered as valuable products, such as carbon nanotubes.

主权项

1. A steady, flow-through method of shear electrolysis, comprising:
receiving axially injected gas feed into a workspace defined between counter-rotating, coaxial, oppositely-charged, approximately disk-shaped impeller/electrodes; advecting the gas feed radially outward through the workspace while simultaneously shearing the gas feed between the impeller/electrodes to form a shear gas feed layer in the workspace; generating gaseous turbulence in the shear gas feed layer; causing mechanical stress from the turbulence on molecular bonds of the gas feed in the shear gas feed layer; causing electrical stress on the molecular bonds of the gas feed in the shear gas feed layer from the counter-rotation of the oppositely-charged, disk-shaped impeller/electrodes; causing gaseous light fraction products to separate from the shear gas feed layer radially inward toward an axis of rotation of the impeller/electrodes resulting from at least one of the mechanical and electrical stress applied to the shear gas feed layer; axially extracting the gaseous separated light fraction products from the workspace; causing heavy fraction products to separate from the shear gas feed layer toward a periphery of the workspace resulting from at least one of the mechanical and electrical stress applied to the shear gas feed layer; and extracting the separated heavy fraction products from the periphery of the workspace.