Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Prime Oleochemicals Industries Sdn. Bhd., Petaling Jaya, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
PLoS One, 2019;14(3):e0213697.
PMID: 30913207 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213697

Abstract

That water may not be an inert medium was indicated by the presence at water's interfaces a negatively charged solute free zone of several hundred microns in thickness called the exclusion zone (EZ). Further evidence was demonstrated by Ovchinnikova's experiments (2009) showing that water can store and release substantial amount of charge. We demonstrate that the charge storage capacity of water arises from highly stable large-scale ionic structures with measurable charge imbalances and discrete levels of charge density. We also show evidence that the charge zones formation requires ionic solutes, and their formation correlate to large change in conductivity, by as much as 250%. Our experiments indicate that large-scale structuring plays a pivotal role in electrolysis and conductivity in ionic solution. We propose that water is an electrochemically active medium and present a new model of electrolysis and conductivity in ionic solution.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.