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The penny battery is a voltaic pile which uses various coinage as the metal disks (pennies) of a traditional voltaic pile. The coins are stacked with pieces of electrolyte soaked paper in between (see diagram at right). The penny battery experiment is common during electrochemistry units in an educational setting.
Each cell in a penny battery can produce up to 0.8 volt, and many can be stacked together to produce higher voltages. Since the battery is a wet cell, the effectiveness will be reduced when the electrolyte evaporates.
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As the name implies, Canadian pennies from 1997 to 1999 may serve the zinc electrode and 1942-1996 pennies as the copper. Alternatively, American pennies from 1982–present may be used as the zinc electrodes and 1944-1982 pennies as the copper electrodes. A variety of other coins can also be used, with varying results. [1] [2]
A penny battery can be useful in producing a small amount of voltage. To make a penny battery it is crucial that there are two different kinds of metals with a substance in between them. To begin, scratch off the copper coating on one side of a penny exposing the metal zinc (silver color). This process will be difficult and will take some time. It is beneficial to have at least 5 pennies so that enough volts can be created. Then cut 5 circle pieces as big as the penny of matboard or cardboard. Soak the matboard in an acid solution. An acid as simple as vinegar and water, or lemon juice could be used. Stack the pennies on top of one another with a piece of matboard in between them. The zinc side should be facing upward. Use a penny that has not been scratched on either side and place it on top. Finally connect an LED with the longer lead attached to the top and shorter lead touching the bottom. The LED should light up proving that the battery works. It is also possible to use a voltmeter to test the amount of volts being produced by the battery cell. Take a AA battery and attach it to voltmeter to ensure that it is working properly before testing out the penny battery. [3]
For an alternate way of making this that is slightly weaker, click here. This method uses USA pennies from 1945 to 1980 or 10 cent euro coins, alongside aluminum foil.
If the LED is not lighting up or if the voltmeter is not registering any electricity then a few problems could have occurred during set up. First, make sure that the matboard or cardboard pieces are moist. Less electrical energy will be produced if less electrolytes are available. Second, ensure that none of the pennies are touching one another and that each matboard only touches two pennies and does not overlap onto other pennies. This would create a short and little to no electrical energy will be produced. Third, check the acidity of the solution that is being used to soak the matboard. The greater the acidity, the greater number of electrolytes, and the greater amount of electricity that can be conducted. Fourth, it can be beneficial to sand down the coins instead of scratching off the copper to reach the zinc layer underneath. [4]
Batteries convert the chemical energy of the two metals (electrodes) interacting with the acid on the matboard (electrolyte) into electrical energy. In this situation, the metal surface serves as the electrode and an electric current (movement of electrons from one metal to the other) is created when the wire connects both metal surfaces. In the first hour, a five cell penny battery is able to provide about 5×10−4 watts. Each cell is defined as a stack of a zinc penny, matboard, and a copper penny. Each cell can provide about 0.6 volts. Indicating that to power an LED light, needing 1.7 volts, only three cells need to be used. As time goes on the amount of energy that the battery can provide decreases. A five cell penny battery can last up to 6+1⁄2 hours providing minimal voltage. The stack of cells is also known as a voltaic pile. [5] [6] [7]
A penny battery functions as a standard voltaic pile, and is powered by a redox reaction between zinc and acid. Electrons flow through the electrolyte solution from zinc toward copper because zinc has a higher activity than copper. [8] The acid releases positively charged hydrogen ions that combine with these electrons to form hydrogen gas, which escapes to the atmosphere. The release of gas corresponds with a large increase in entropy, making the reaction irreversible.
The reaction can be written as two separate reactions in different regions of the cell, or as one overall reaction. The reactions shown here use acetic acid, but a variety of other acids can also be used.
Despite often being made of similar materials, this is not the same mechanism that powers a galvanic cell. Both types of cell can use acid as an electrolyte, copper as a cathode, and zinc as both an anode and as a substance to be oxidized. However they cause different substances to be reduced: voltaic piles reduce acid, and galvanic cells reduce copper. This is because galvanic cells contain dissolved copper ions, which can be reduced to form the more stable copper metal. Voltaic piles such as the penny battery start with all of their metal in solid form, so they don't contain any dissolved copper ions that can be reduced.
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
An anode is an electrode of a polarized electrical device through which conventional current enters the device. This contrasts with a cathode, an electrode of the device through which conventional current leaves the device. A common mnemonic is ACID, for "anode current into device". The direction of conventional current in a circuit is opposite to the direction of electron flow, so electrons flow from the anode of a galvanic cell, into an outside or external circuit connected to the cell. For example, the end of a household battery marked with a "+" is the cathode.
Electrochemistry is the branch of physical chemistry concerned with the relationship between electrical potential difference and identifiable chemical change. These reactions involve electrons moving via an electronically-conducting phase between electrodes separated by an ionically conducting and electronically insulating electrolyte.
An electrochemical cell is a device that generates electrical energy from chemical reactions. Electrical energy can also be applied to these cells to cause chemical reactions to occur. Electrochemical cells that generate an electric current are called voltaic or galvanic cells and those that generate chemical reactions, via electrolysis for example, are called electrolytic cells.
The voltaic pile was the first electrical battery that could continuously provide an electric current to a circuit. It was invented by Italian chemist Alessandro Volta, who published his experiments in 1799. Its invention can be traced back to an argument between Volta and Luigi Galvani, Volta's fellow Italian scientist who had conducted experiments on frogs' legs. The voltaic pile then enabled a rapid series of other discoveries including the electrical decomposition (electrolysis) of water into oxygen and hydrogen by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle (1800) and the discovery or isolation of the chemical elements sodium (1807), potassium (1807), calcium (1808), boron (1808), barium (1808), strontium (1808), and magnesium (1808) by Humphry Davy.
In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a technique that uses direct electric current (DC) to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction. Electrolysis is commercially important as a stage in the separation of elements from naturally occurring sources such as ores using an electrolytic cell. The voltage that is needed for electrolysis to occur is called the decomposition potential. The word "lysis" means to separate or break, so in terms, electrolysis would mean "breakdown via electricity".
A lemon battery is a simple battery often made for the purpose of education. Typically, a piece of zinc metal and a piece of copper are inserted into a lemon and connected by wires. Power generated by reaction of the metals is used to power a small device such as a light-emitting diode (LED).
A galvanic cell or voltaic cell, named after the scientists Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, respectively, is an electrochemical cell in which an electric current is generated from spontaneous oxidation–reduction reactions. A common apparatus generally consists of two different metals, each immersed in separate beakers containing their respective metal ions in solution that are connected by a salt bridge or separated by a porous membrane.
An electrolytic cell is an electrochemical cell that utilizes an external source of electrical energy to force a chemical reaction that would otherwise not occur. The external energy source is a voltage applied between the cell's two electrodes; an anode and a cathode, which are immersed in an electrolyte solution. This is in contrast to a galvanic cell, which itself is a source of electrical energy and the foundation of a battery. The net reaction taking place in a galvanic cell is a spontaneous reaction, i.e., the Gibbs free energy remains -ve, while the net reaction taking place in an electrolytic cell is the reverse of this spontaneous reaction, i.e., the Gibbs free energy is +ve.
An alkaline battery is a type of primary battery where the electrolyte has a pH value above 7. Typically these batteries derive energy from the reaction between zinc metal and manganese dioxide.
A primary battery or primary cell is a battery that is designed to be used once and discarded, and not recharged with electricity and reused like a secondary cell. In general, the electrochemical reaction occurring in the cell is not reversible, rendering the cell unrechargeable. As a primary cell is used, chemical reactions in the battery use up the chemicals that generate the power; when they are gone, the battery stops producing electricity. In contrast, in a secondary cell, the reaction can be reversed by running a current into the cell with a battery charger to recharge it, regenerating the chemical reactants. Primary cells are made in a range of standard sizes to power small household appliances such as flashlights and portable radios.
Zinc–air batteries (non-rechargeable), and zinc–air fuel cells are metal–air batteries powered by oxidizing zinc with oxygen from the air. These batteries have high energy densities and are relatively inexpensive to produce. Sizes range from very small button cells for hearing aids, larger batteries used in film cameras that previously used mercury batteries, to very large batteries used for electric vehicle propulsion and grid-scale energy storage.
The Daniell cell is a type of electrochemical cell invented in 1836 by John Frederic Daniell, a British chemist and meteorologist, and consists of a copper pot filled with a copper (II) sulfate solution, in which is immersed an unglazed earthenware container filled with sulfuric acid and a zinc electrode. He was searching for a way to eliminate the hydrogen bubble problem found in the voltaic pile, and his solution was to use a second electrolyte to consume the hydrogen produced by the first. Zinc sulfate may be substituted for the sulfuric acid. The Daniell cell was a great improvement over the existing technology used in the early days of battery development. A later variant of the Daniell cell called the gravity cell or crowfoot cell was invented in the 1860s by a Frenchman named Callaud and became a popular choice for electrical telegraphy.
A zinc–carbon battery (or carbon zinc battery in U.S. English) is a dry cell primary battery that provides direct electric current from the electrochemical reaction between zinc (Zn) and manganese dioxide (MnO2) in the presence of an ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) electrolyte. It produces a voltage of about 1.5 volts between the zinc anode, which is typically constructed as a cylindrical container for the battery cell, and a carbon rod surrounded by a compound with a higher Standard electrode potential (positive polarity), known as the cathode, that collects the current from the manganese dioxide electrode. The name "zinc-carbon" is slightly misleading as it implies that carbon is acting as the oxidizing agent rather than the manganese dioxide.
The Leclanché cell is a battery invented and patented by the French scientist Georges Leclanché in 1866. The battery contained a conducting solution (electrolyte) of ammonium chloride, a cathode of carbon, a depolarizer of manganese dioxide (oxidizer), and an anode of zinc (reductant). The chemistry of this cell was later successfully adapted to manufacture a dry cell.
Batteries provided the primary source of electricity before the development of electric generators and electrical grids around the end of the 19th century. Successive improvements in battery technology facilitated major electrical advances, from early scientific studies to the rise of telegraphs and telephones, eventually leading to portable computers, mobile phones, electric cars, and many other electrical devices.
An electric battery is a source of electric power consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with external connections for powering electrical devices. When a battery is supplying power, its positive terminal is the cathode and its negative terminal is the anode. The terminal marked negative is the source of electrons that will flow through an external electric circuit to the positive terminal. When a battery is connected to an external electric load, a redox reaction converts high-energy reactants to lower-energy products, and the free-energy difference is delivered to the external circuit as electrical energy. Historically the term "battery" specifically referred to a device composed of multiple cells; however, the usage has evolved to include devices composed of a single cell.
Galvanic corrosion is an electrochemical process in which one metal corrodes preferentially when it is in electrical contact with another, in the presence of an electrolyte. A similar galvanic reaction is exploited in primary cells to generate a useful electrical voltage to power portable devices. This phenomenon is named after Italian physician Luigi Galvani (1737–1798).
This article provides information on the following six methods of producing electric power.
The Iron Redox Flow Battery (IRFB), also known as Iron Salt Battery (ISB), stores and releases energy through the electrochemical reaction of iron salt. This type of battery belongs to the class of redox-flow batteries (RFB), which are alternative solutions to Lithium-Ion Batteries (LIB) for stationary applications. The IRFB can achieve up to 70% round trip energy efficiency. In comparison, other long duration storage technologies such as pumped hydro energy storage provide around 80% round trip energy efficiency.