Liberation of chemical energy in pulsed high current arcs in liquids and gases

Abstract

High current pulsed arcs in both water and air, are able to liberate chemical energy from the arc medium which can be recovered in either mechanical or electrical form. Despite the high currents, the arc is relatively cold which apparently makes this a highly efficient mechanism for liberating stored chemical energy and therefore a possible future energy source. In the case of water, hydrogen bonds are broken in order to create the observed small fog droplets. The energetics of small droplet bonding requires that the remaining hydrogen bonds will be expected to drop into lower energy configurations than in bulk water and thus the transition to droplets can release a large amount of chemically stored energy. Similarly in air, arcs break covalent bonds which are also a source of stored chemical energy. It appears that more mechanical energy is liberated in the water arcs for a particular discharge energy. However the lower mass and consequent higher velocities of the end products of the air arc explosion probably explain why the these arcs are more suited to direct conversion to electrical energy.