ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Copper-chlorine cycle

Okay kiddo, do you know what copper and chlorine are? Copper is a metal that we can find in wires and coins, while chlorine is a gas that can be used to clean water or make things like bleach.

Now, have you ever heard of energy, like electricity? The copper-chlorine cycle is all about using energy from the sun to create electricity. Let's break it down step by step:

Step 1: The sun shines on a special thing called a solar collector. This solar collector uses the heat from the sun to turn water into steam.

Step 2: The steam from the solar collector goes into a machine called a turbine, which spins around and creates energy that we can use as electricity.

Step 3: After the steam goes through the turbine, it cools down and turns back into water. But this water isn't just thrown away - it gets sent to a different machine called an electrolyzer.

Step 4: In the electrolyzer, the water gets split apart into hydrogen and oxygen gases. This might sound weird, but it's because we need those gases for the next step.

Step 5: Once the hydrogen and oxygen are separated, they get mixed with chlorine gas to make a new thing called hydrogen chloride.

Step 6: The hydrogen chloride is then combined with copper to create a compound called cupric chloride.

Step 7: But we don't want to keep the cupric chloride forever - we want to use it to make energy again! So we take it and heat it up, which releases the chlorine gas and turns the cupric chloride back into copper.

Step 8: The chlorine gas from step 7 gets sent back to step 5, so we can use it again to make more hydrogen chloride.

And there you have it, the copper-chlorine cycle! It's a way to use the sun's energy to create electricity, then recycle the water and chemicals so we can use them again and again.