Abstract
Following the concepts illustrated within the previous chapter, an analogy is presented here between the working mechanisms of galvanic cells and biological redox reactions. These processes are explained here to underline the working principle of power conversion within biomass generation and to provide students with clear information on the reactions of oxidation and reduction and how they are coupled. The chapter underlines the necessity of interdisciplinary research, above all when the research is focused on renewable energy technology. As a matter of fact, and as was previously written, new trends in this field are related to artificial photosynthesis among others. In this chapter, the working principles of galvanic cells are explained in simple terms with emphasis on the electrochemical potential formation and the overall calculation of the cell potential in terms of half-cell reactions.
You know…, they were all things which were born spontaneously. One did what he could do and according to his personal attitudes and the possessed abilities. One was doing one task and another one was doing some other tasks and there was very much friendship among us. And then, there was enormous passion in what we were doing.
A suitable description of a successful research group. Freely translated from the words of Emilio Segrè, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1959.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Acrivos, J. (1988). Physical chemistry, third edition (Levine, Ira N.). Journal of Chemical Education, 65(12), A335. https://doi.org/10.1021/ed065pA335.3.
Bockris, J. O. M., & Reddy, A. K. (1998). Modern electrochemistry (2nd ed.). Berlin: Springer.
Holze, R. (2009). Experimental electrochemistry: A laboratory textbook (1st ed.). Wiley.
Hückel, E., & Debye, P. (1923). The theory of electrolytes: I. lowering of freezing point and related phenomena. Physikalische Zeitschrift, 24, 185–206.
Kielland, J. (1937). Individual activity coefficients of ions in aqueous solutions. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 59(9), 1675–1678. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja01288a032.
Ksenzhek, O. S., & Volkov, A. G. (1998). Plant energetics. San Diego, California: Academic Press.
Lacina, K., Sopoušek, J., Skládal, P., & Vanýsek, P. (2018). Boosting of the output voltage of a galvanic cell. Electrochimica Acta, 282, 331–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2018.06.080.
Levine, I. N. (2009). Physical chemistry (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2018). NIST chemistry webbook. Retrieved October 3, 2018, from https://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/.
Ross, J. R. (1991). Practical handbook of biochemistry and molecular biology. Biochemical Education, 19(2), 95–96. In G. D Fasman (Ed.) (pp. 601). Boca Raton, Florida, USA: CRC Press, 1989. $00 ISBN 0-8493-3705-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/0307-4412(91)90020-9.
Sinha, R. K. (2013). Modern plant physiology (2nd ed.). Alpha Science International Ltd.
van Rotterdam, B. J., Crielaard, W., van Stokkum, I. H. M., Hellingwerf, K. J., & Westerhoff, H. V. (2002). Simplicity in complexity: the photosynthetic reaction center performs as a simple 0.2 V battery. FEBS Letters, 510(1–2), 105–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0014-5793(01)03210-0.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
De Blasio, C. (2019). Redox Potential and Galvanic Cells. In: Fundamentals of Biofuels Engineering and Technology. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11599-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11599-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11598-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11599-9
eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)