NPTEL-NOC IITM · Transcript · · Updated
7. Imagination in Research – Transcript
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Hello. Uh welcome to this class. Uh today we will talk about an important aspect of research which is uh the uh imagination uh in research. Um it is a very important ingredient. uh it decides uh how fresh and new your outlook is uh in the research that activity that you do. uh and often that uh we spoke last time about uh you know transformational research and uh incremental research uh
I told you how uh you know transformational research is much tougher to do but it sort of opens up a new field uh in that area uh and uh uh and and so it is the one that is you know given maximum credit and lot of uh uh importance to it but at the same time it is that much tougher to do uh something like that. Um and usually it takes a lot of imagination to do transformational research. Uh what I
said is incremental research is often using the result of the transformational research to uh you know learn a lot about various new uh uh you know features in the uh uh research uh area.
So you're using that transformational result uh kind of now reexploring the landscape using this transformational result result and uh so that reexploration in some sense is incremental it is very important it's very important valuable and so on but it is in some sense incremental because you're kind of taking a main result and then using it in uh different different circumstances uh so uh uh and as I said
you know the the whole scientific uh uh field uh goes uh you know expands in leaps and bounds when you have some transformational activity that happens and typically a very strong ingredient for the transformation activity to happen is imagination.
Okay. So uh in this class I'm going to show you uh multiple examples uh of uh in in different different fields where uh we will talk about you know what some transformational activity that happened uh and you can see it's in different scales. there's not there's no fixed uh uh rule for it. There's no fixed uh uh you know framework for it. Uh so it is going to differ depending on uh which field you're talking about and where
what was the status of that field when this transformational activity happened and you know kind of the imagination uh that was uh uh involved in it. So that's what we will see today.
So for example, let us look at a situation where uh uh you have maybe uh uh you know let us say a fuel cell or some other uh uh reaction system where uh you have some reaction happening and reactants are flowing into the uh uh you know system to complete the reaction. Uh so maybe you find out that uh uh if you run short of one of the reactants right
uh the system gets spoiled and that can easily happen because many many times in electrochemical systems you set a certain voltage uh and at that voltage some reaction is happening and then uh if you if you maintain that voltage but you cut a reactant right or do something like that you're uh you're trying to draw some current so that current is trying to be drawn from the system And due to that there's some voltage that it is maintaining and the reactants are
participating the reaction. Now uh when this process is going on uh if for whatever reason one reactant uh drops in uh quantity it may end up that uh you know undesirable reactions may end up happening in the system and thereby damaging your system. So um a more standard approach to handle this situation is to look at those uh uh you know the damage that has happened and
you see which which uh uh what shall I say constituents of that system got damaged and then you do a lot of work to see if you can now make that constituent stronger in some sense maybe you get give it a quoting maybe uh you know you change the composition of that constituent uh and so there's a wide body of research that you can do where you're looking at how you can modify uh that part of that system uh such that it
becomes more and more tolerant to the uh fact that the reactant concentration is changing. So reactant concentration drops uh and this uh component still uh does not deteriorate it maintains. So some some degradation that happened to the component is not going to happen because you have now added some coating to it or uh you have added changed the composition uh and so on. So this is like a fairly elaborate piece of work.
Uh if you wanted to go down this path, right? So you have this path you have your path is that you are going to change the composition of a component.
Or maybe you're going to put a quoting Right? So you can take an approach like this and this is a fairly large research project. So if you change the composition of the component, you have a wide range of options available. So you have to uh you know do some scientific study. You have to look at the literature to see what can you put in terms of uh composition which may now become uh resistant to degradation. And
you have to do a very elaborate test, right? You have to do a very elaborate test across uh wide range of operating conditions to see if that change that you made to the components composition has now actually made it more tolerant to changes in uh uh
Okay, so changes in reactant concentration is is the issue that you're trying to deal with and the way you can do that is to figure out which component degraded due to the change in the reactant uh concentration and then see what modification you can do to that component. So as I said you can change the composition of the component. Uh you can apply a coating.
So you have some particle and now you have got uh some other coating on top of it. in the hope that this quoting now uh prevents it from degrading. So this is the uh approach you would take. Each of these approaches whether you take this approach or you take this approach it's a very elaborate research activity uh and you're going to spend I don't know maybe 6 months one year to try out something and then uh you figure out you
know now you implement it in the uh reaction chamber uh and then see if in the new conditions with the new material that you have incorporated into the reaction chamber uh is it now tolerant to the changes in reactant concentration right so this is one approach And this is maybe the more traditional approach uh more traditional approach would be this um and most likely based on you know everything else that you have read
in various fields this is the approach you will take right now you can think of an imaginative way of handling the situation by saying okay so you have see typically you have multiple reactants coming there right you have multiple reactants arriving at that reaction site and that is where the reaction takes place and you get the product you can think of a situation where you say that okay uh my problem is if uh the
problem the reason the material is degrading is because one reactant has uh you are expecting some stochometric mix of reactants to arrive right so the stochometric mix of reactants have to arrive at the site and that is how the reaction is happening now if one reactant for whatever reason is dropping in concentration um uh the material is getting spoiled the reaction site is getting spoiled So here's an imaginative way in which you can deal with the situation. you say
okay so what if one reactant is dropping concentration um I will just make sure that the other reactant also drops in concentration so that they are uh the stochometry is still maintained right so uh and and therefore as far as the reaction site is concerned it's still seeing a stochometric mix of the reactants right so you can uh you can look at the idea that there's something that is rate limiting and you want to ensure that the
both the reactants are sitting uh at the same stochometric level uh so that as far as the um uh system is concerned uh the the reactant that was creating the problem is no longer rate limiting right the drop you dropped concentration of one reactant reactant a reactant A dropped in concentration and became rate limiting and that is why you had the problem so now you say when reactant A drops in concentration I will also simultaneously drop the concentration of
reactant B such that stochometry is always maintained and that may be much easier to do because you're you Today with all the valves and you know metering that you have available g mass flow meters that you have you can manage those reactant ratios very nicely such that the correct ratio is always maintained. Now suddenly what would have taken
this would have taken a few years I mean um I mean several months So this research which I'm saying you know change the composition of the component put a quoting on the component these are all perfectly valid ways of doing this there perfectly valid way of handling this particular problem and they are good ways of handling the problem but they are activities which
are going to be several months to few years for you to do the full systematic study and then put it back into the system. Whereas this idea that you know you you now uh drop the other reactant also which you never thought about because you are only focused on where the problem is. Your problem is that one reactant A is dropping in concentration.
Uh and reactant B is not a problem. So you are not thinking about reactant B. You're thinking on about reactant A. But if you suddenly step back and you reimagine the situation which is where your imagination comes into play and you say so what if reactant B is not a problem? I will drop reactant B. my I will handle the issue with reactant A by meddling with reactant B. I will drop the concentration of reactant B or if there are reactant B, C and D, I will drop the concentration of all three of them such that stochometry is maintained
and once stoometry is maintained hopefully in this situation the reaction is still running uh it's maybe running slower but nothing is getting damaged because the stoometry is being uh maintained right so suddenly this solution so I'll say manipulating
right? So manipulating concentration of other reactants is a solution you can implement almost overnight. I mean today you decide that why not I try it. You give it a shot and then you run some few control experiments and then suddenly overnight you have a solution. you have a solution in place uh which handles the problem that you have right it also needs tests. It is not that you know you come up with this idea and then instantly it is fine. You have to test it out. You test it out and satisfy yourself that uh in the range of operating conditions that you have this
solution can actually work. Uh and maybe there are there are there are windows over which it is working and there are other windows of operating situations where it may not work. Right? So that that is a landscape that of uh you know operation that you have to examine. So this is not a sure shot uh solution across the board but it is it's a different kind of solution. It's a very different kind of solution and it takes a certain amount of imagination to say okay I will not bother about reactant A.
will actually go to reactant B and C and D which are not our problems and solve solve this issue handling those uh and suddenly you have a very elegant solution which is almost uh immediately implementable right so many years of work go away you don't have to create anything new uh you're down to the same system so and the solution has been implemented so uh and this is very valuable because see although I may say you can put a quoting I may say you can