The Wisdom Wall
7 quotable lessons, heuristics and mental models. Every one is playable at the moment it was said. No fortune cookies allowed.
“The limitation of electrochemistry is that it's a chemical reaction that takes place at an interface, right? In a way, you could say that it's a two-dimensional process, right? You know, you always need an electrode, and you need electrons being transferred out of an electrode. And, uh, that makes it a two-dimensional…”
“So, this idea of using low-cost electricity in an electrolyzer to produce acid and base allows you to produce acid and base for chemical reactions that then follow. And those chemical reactions can be done on a volume basis, and in fact, you can decouple in terms of time when you carry out the chemical reaction. So,…”
“Well, so, um, SAFs, sustainable aviation fuels would be an example, and in particular, you know, CO₂ to fuels. Uh, that is a case where, you know, CO₂, you know, decomposing molecules is highly energetic, and that's where electrochemistry has that advantage that I referred to earlier. Dial in with voltage, a high…”
“the ability to, you know, run processes continuously downstream of that, that is where having some form of storage, I think, is, is important. That's what you have to think about doing from, from day one.”
“Well, a biological process, even if it has an electrochemical component to it, it's hard to get to high current density. Why is that? It's just that the molecules are large and bulky, right? And, you know, inorganic molecules tend to be compact by comparison, right?”
“one of the reasons the application of electrochemistry have, you know, become much more prevalent and interesting is because of this, you know, megatrend towards low-cost electricity. Uh, you know, the lower the cost of electricity, the more attractive it is as an energy source. And that's what has driven many of…”
“I would say that one of the Other limitations of electrochemistry, something it's not very good at, is solid, solid transformations. Okay. Uh, so, and that, so, you know, why would that be? It's that, uh, one of the things you have to have in order to make electrochemical reactions take place is that you have to have…”