Compressive pressure, spatial confinement of ions, and adiabatic heat generation in binary strong electrolyte solutions by an external electric field

Abstract

In this paper, we make use of the exact hydrodynamic solution for the Stokes equation for the velocity of a binary ionic solution that we have recently obtained, and show that the nonequilibrium pressure in an electrolyte solution subjected to an external electric field can be not only compressive, but also divergent in the region containing the coordinate origin at which the center ion of its ion atmosphere is located. This divergent compressive pressure implies that it would be theoretically possible to locally confine the ion and also to adiabatically generate heat in the local by means of the external electric field. The field dependence of pressure and thus heat emission is numerically shown and tabulated together with the theoretical estimate of its upper bound, which is exponential with respect to the field strength. It shows that, theoretically, the Coulomb barrier between nuclei in the electrolyte solution (e.g., the ion and a nucleus of the solvent molecule) can be overcome so as to make them fuse together, if no other effects intervene to prevent it.