Unfortunately, this time, Chen Yushan was wrong.
After Lu Zhou returned to Jinling, he made up his mind to go on a retreat. He also made up his mind to not leave his room until he solved the Riemann's conjecture problem. However, there were too many things to do in the real world.
This time, the person calling for help was Yang Xu, the director of the Institute of Computational Materials.
As for the content of the call …
It was about the lithium-air battery project that was launched two or three years ago.
Speaking of which, Lu Zhou was quite surprised. Until the end of last year, he had been reading reports from the Institute of Computational Materials about the major progress in lithium-air battery research.
Why did the research take a sudden turn for the worse this year?
Wang Peng drove him to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study. As soon as Lu Zhou stepped into the laboratory, Yang Xu grabbed his arm.
"Do me a favor! Boss! I … can't do it anymore! "
"Don't be like this, let's talk. I'm here, right? Don't make it sound like you're going to die. Tell me what's wrong, I'll see if I can help … "
Lu Zhou was shocked when he saw how desperate Yang Xu was.
Ever since Yang Xu became the director of the Institute of Computational Materials, he had led many large projects and solved many materials science problems for the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.
It wasn't strange for a cutting-edge research project like this to encounter problems that couldn't be solved, but for this guy to be tortured like this …
Honestly speaking, Lu Zhou was really curious.
Yang Xu: "Do you remember the porous silicon-based molecular exchange membrane that I mentioned in the research progress report a while ago?"
Lu Zhou thought about it carefully and remembered some of the content in the report. He nodded and spoke.
"I remember a bit."
Yang Xu took a deep breath and said, "According to the experimental analysis, we found that this kind of porous silicon material can slowly transport molecules of a specific diameter from the high-pressure side to the low-pressure side under a certain pressure difference. Our project team immediately followed up on the research in this area and successfully made an exchange membrane that can screen gas molecules in the range of 3.4-3.5a. "
Lu Zhou: "Isn't that good?"
The diameter of the oxygen molecule was exactly 3.46 A. It was exactly within this range. Although the AR gas molecule was 3.4, it was also in this screening range, but AR was a rare gas, so it was not affected.
"It's not good at all." Yang Xu had a bitter expression on his face. He shook his head and said, "The upper and lower boundaries of the screening range are not fixed. They change linearly with the pressure … You understand now."
Hearing this, Lu Zhou's face finally showed a look of understanding.
"So that's how it is. I finally understand your problem."
In short, this porous silicon-based molecular exchange membrane was like an elastic fishing net. The larger the net, the larger the mesh, and the more fish would escape the net …
As for whether the air pressure on both sides could be maintained at a constant value to ensure that only oxygen passed through the exchange membrane …
That was obviously impossible.
Yang Xu made it very clear that the movement of the upper and lower boundaries of the entire screening range changed linearly with the pressure difference on both sides.
Not to mention the technical cost of controlling the pressure difference to such an accurate degree, from a safety point of view, there was no way they would allow the redox reaction system in the lithium-air battery to run on such an unstable wire.
The liveliness of lithium metal was no joke. It could explode at the slightest provocation!
If they let any impurities in, they wouldn't be building a battery, they would be building a bomb.
"We've been stuck at this bottleneck for half a year." Yang Xu shook his head and said, "We've tried everything …"
Lu Zhou thought for a second and said, "Did you do a simulation? Let me see. "
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
"Come with me."
Yang Xu brought Lu Zhou to the computer and clicked the mouse twice. Soon, a three-dimensional structure of the porous reticular superposition structure of the silicon-based molecular exchange membrane appeared in front of Lu Zhou.
Yang Xu pointed at the image on the screen and explained.
"We try to increase the surface pressure on one side of the exchange membrane, and molecules of a certain diameter will pass through the channel in the molecular exchange membrane at a certain speed …"
As he spoke, Yang Xu's right hand that was holding the mouse tapped twice with his index finger.
On the screen, the red and green dots on the right side of the molecular exchange membrane seemed to have found an exit, and they began to gather on the surface of the molecular exchange membrane.
"… When the surface pressure of the membrane reaches position A in the diagram, oxygen begins to pass through the molecular exchange membrane and move toward the gas exchange chamber of the lithium-air battery. However, when the surface pressure increases with the pressure difference and reaches position B, nitrogen also begins to pass through the exchange membrane …"
"But in fact, when the pressure difference gradually increases from A to B, some nitrogen molecules are already penetrating at a slow speed."
On the screen, the nitrogen red dot had already passed through the exchange membrane and contacted the lithium anode.
Lu Zhou looked at Yang Xu's simulation and had a dignified look on his face.
After Yang Xu finished the demonstration, he sighed and leaned back in his computer chair.
"I can think of ways to deal with a series of impurities, including water molecules, carbon dioxide, and even carbon monoxide. There are also some gases like sulfur dioxide with a weak content that are easy to deal with, but only nitrogen … is too difficult to deal with. It's like a swarm of flies that can't be driven away."
Even though nitrogen could be used as a protective gas, such as in the food industry, it couldn't be used for lithium-air batteries because nitrogen would react with lithium to form unstable li3n.
If nitrogen entered the lithium-air battery's circulation system, the entire battery would fail after a few cycles.
The reason why lithium-air batteries were difficult was that the lithium metal was too active. The impurities that needed to be removed were too f * cking lazy.
IBM didn't believe in this, so they worked with the famous Almaden Research Center on this project. They even used the high-tech distributed computing technology to locate every oxygen atom that entered the reaction system and accurately distribute it to the lithium anode …
As for the final result, it was obvious.
Even the rich and powerful IBM had no choice but to believe this. They axed this bottomless project and fired the project leader.
Even though the Institute of Computational Materials' silicon material did bring a lot of hope to this area of research, if they couldn't solve the problem of removing other impurities, then this could only be regarded as an interesting in-progress achievement. It wasn't any more advanced than putting an oxygen tank on the outside of a battery.
Before Yang Xu found Lu Zhou, the lithium-air battery research team had been stuck at this bottleneck for almost half a year, and they hadn't made any progress at all.
His intuition told him that if he couldn't solve this problem, then no one in the entire Institute for Advanced Study could solve this problem except for Professor Lu, one of the founders of computational materials science.
However, even though Lu Zhou was quite confident in his own abilities, he couldn't think of a good solution.
He rubbed his chin and thought for a long time. In the end, he could only give an ambiguous answer.
"I'll go back and think about it. If there's any new progress, I'll let you know."
Seeing how Lu Zhou couldn't think of a good solution, Yang Xu began to sigh.
"… Thank you!"
If Lu Zhou couldn't solve this problem, he would have to declare this technical route a failure and think about other possible directions.
When Lu Zhou heard Yang Xu's "thank you", he didn't notice the despair in Yang Xu's heart. Instead, he smiled awkwardly.
"There's nothing to thank me for …"
If this thing could be developed, it would be worth trillions of dollars!
Even though he wasn't interested in money, the value of this research project was worth a try …
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