Slashdot Mirror
New Method To Generate Electricity from Water
spaceling writes "The BBC reports reporting on research published in the Institute of Physics Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering of the first new method of generating electricity in over 150 years. Larry Kostiuk and Daniel Kwok 'created a glass block, two centimetres in diameter and three millimetres thick, containing about 400,000 to 500,000 individual channels...[and] generated about 10 volts with a current of around a milliamp. This allowed the team to successfully power a lightbulb.'" This has also been covered all over the place.
So... if these things end up becoming cell phone batteries and what not, where are you going to get the water flow needed to separate the charges?
Shaking the phone or something? That just looks dumb
In the humble opinion of the battery manufacturers
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Or can sea water be used?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Basically these new light bulbs would be able to power themselves? now that's handy.
... the energy required to pressurize the water?
Is it more or less the electricity produced by that method?
Of course you can always build underwater and take advantage of gravity to make water flow through your channels...
Guess we can also always get back to getting water in the well to wash, err, power out electronic devices!
Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
BTW, nuclear reactors are not a new way of generating energy that was discovered in the last hundred and fifty years.
If we take one liter (1 kg) of water at a pressure of 30 cm, then the energy contained is 2.94 J, of which 0.12 J will be available as electrical output. By comparison, a 1500 mAh NiMH battery can store 6500 J. The efficiency of the water battery can probably be improved, but let's face it, for small volumes and reasonable pressures, the stored energy density will never be very high.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Also, the electricity isn't generated from the water. It's generated using the kinetic energy of flowing water - just like a turbine or waterwheel, and something needs to produce the kinetic energy in the first place...excuse me while I go and check my cold fusion plant, the room temperature seems a bit low.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I read one of the articles on this and mabey I missed something but where is this energy coming from? If there is no input of energy then how is there an output. Or have they figured out a loop-hole in the law of thermo-dynamics by finaly creating a perpetual motion machine.
do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Can someone give me info/link on the % of eficiency on our energy resources? Thanks
I guess that means that pi really are squared.
As if to imply that wars aren't already being fought over water...just look at Israel, which diverted the River Jordan away from Syria.
Or, for something closer to home, try reading the Milagro Beanfield War, about a poor farmer who dares to use enough water for his field so he can eat. Rich cattle rancher/farmer gets all the water because he's in bed with the state officials..
Please help metamoderate.
This produces a tiny amount of power but it could be ideal for things like TV remotes, wireless mice, garage door controls, etc.
Sure its being hyped a bit there is a lot of potential here.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Heh! I noticed not a lot of RTFA in evidence. The researchers who discovered this stated where the energy comes from.
It's a new method of generating electricity, not a new way of storing energy or an energy source. The energy would have to come from somewhere else, and since the idea is pretty new, I doubt that anyone knows in much detail how (or if) it will work out in practice.
I suppose you could either recharge a normal battery by pumping the handle your handy, portable water-generator for a few minutes, a bit like a baygen radio.
Or, you could store the water under pressure and let it out through the device to get the energy back out.
Indeed, but I think there is some prior art
Why am I speaking of prior art, btw? It's unpatentable anyways, because it's a perpetual motion machine of the second type!
"...replace nuclear power as the main hope for renewable energy"
nuclear power, as it exists and as it will exist for some time to come is anything but renewable. it relies upon a very scarce consumable resource (uranium) and leaves a very problematic waste.
the current "main hope for renewable energy" is wind, which according to a lot of estimates could be powering the whole world, if we were set up right, and could definitely power the whole world with reasonable cuts in use and increases in efficiency.
this looks like a way to replace small batteries, which are mainly problematic due to disposal problems.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Great!
Hey you resource-poor 3rd world countries, you can have all the power you want, all you need is glass (you've got plently of sand - we can use that - so that's a big CHECK) and a clean source of flowing water... oh DAMN!
I knew this was to good to be true.
--
Rare Window - free your photos
"...mobile phones or calculators which could be charged up by pumping water to high pressure."
Now we will see people becoming concerned about phones exploding under pressure bursting our eardrums, ruining hairdos, saturating women's clothes... wait, that could be a Good Thing
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
But you probably have the idea right. It is easy to extrapolate anything you want if you use the right (for your argument) physical model.
I think the ebullient press is assuming that this thing's only problem is that it is small, and they see no problems with its efficiencies or practical implementations.
Possibly, though, this might be able to generate small amounts of electricity where nothing else is practical. Remote sensors associated with flowing liquids would not need external power sources. Stuff like that.
It's a pity wind turbines are butt ugly and you need thousands of them... in the UK we're going down that road and the protests have started already :)
The truth is all power generation has tradeoffs somewhere, and there's not 'perfect' way to do it, short of using less power.
The article stated that this method is mainly only good at generating small amounts of electric power. This could still be useful for thing like pacemakers, however; I imagine people would rather have one of these powering their pacemakers than have surgery every few years to change batteries.
I wonder -- would it work on blood? The channes are 10um thick; how wide is a red blood cell?
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
Feynman analyzes this kind of perpetual motion machine in his Lecture Notes. They don't work for fairly fundamental reasons. BTW, the collisions may be elastic, but ratchets are not!
As far as I understand it, The glass around the chaneels is charged; for easy let's say it's positively charged. When water with ions (read: salt) is pumped through the tubes the positive ions cannot pass: they are repelled and stay behind, whereas the negative ions can move freely through the tube and out the other end. Entrance is positive, exit is negative, hence the potential difference and current can be extracted. The energy comes from the pumping power and is converted to electrical power. I just don't see how you can keep water pressurised for months while the floodgates (tubes) are open, because that's what you'll have to do if you want to make it into a battery...
All in all it's not as intricate as the BBC makes it out to be...
This isn't an energy source, you have to pressurize the water.
Unless you have free pressurized water, it won't create a new source of energy.
If you do, how is it different then your old fashioned water wheel? (or the newer hydro electric dams).
Maybe this can generate small amounts of electricity on already moving parts, but I don't see the breakthrough.
well, if we can find a free way to produce the preasure (i.e. using a natural occurence like light or gravity) then we can have a usefu source of electrical generation.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Wouldn't a Van Der Graff generator be more efficient?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
I think this raises a question though:
Modern nuclear reactors are really just big steam-engines with the fission pile as the boiler. Granted, the "pile" may be a fast-breeder core, a series of rods or a pebble bed, but it's still just a hot nuclear furnace.
But how efficient is water component? As I understand it, a liquid (normally sealed water, but sometimes liquid metal) is pumped through the fission pile, heats up, is pumped out to heat water which then turns into steam, which then turns a turbine, and electricity is produced.
Would it be more efficient to pressurise these new water cells with the heat instead of generating steam, or at the very least, without needing to turn a turbine?
For that matter, if you could make it compact enough, would the system have applications in nuclear submarine boilers? Modern diesel subs still have an advantage noise-wise over nuclear subs because while diesel subs run off battery power, nuclear subs still use steam turbines.
This disadvantage is often clear every time US and Australian submarines train together, though different training is probably a factor too.
I pretty certain that both OTEC and magnetohydrodynamics are less than 150 years old.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion .html
Remember how exciting it seemed? I'll wait for the other shoe to drop....
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Now if they could find a way of generating power out of beer, that would be cool. A power keg, so to speak. Though as there's almost no way of telling Molson apart from water, it's qutie likely that the scientists were actually using beer.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
For those whom don't get the joke, basically the ratchet heats up by impacts until its position is too random to gain energy from the impacts. Also the ratchet is flexible making it's position random. Really the same anyway, heat equals vibration.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I think that could, if the CO2 doesn't create a problem, solve the whole pressure deal. And plain ol' carbonated water is (comparatively) cheap to boot.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
So, now we must invade Canada. The evil Canadians could use this to create Weapons of Mass Destruction! We must stop the Canadian Evil Empire...
If you RTFA, it's 1% efficient (worse than a little turbine, for instance) and you need to pressurize the water first. Which means some kind of elastic vessel, since water isn't compressible. So you need a big balloon attached to your laptop...
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
See, for instance, http://www.amasci.com/emotor/kelvin.html
Which operates under a very similar principle, but with macrochannels. I built one of these when I was a kid, thirty-some years ago. It is so damn cool, your tongue sticks to it!
The thought of converting ocean energy into electricity came around about 100 years ago. In the late 1920's George Claude finally constructed a 22 kilowatt machine on the coast of Cuba.
Magnetohydrodynamics is the theory of the macroscopic interaction of electrically conducting fluids with a magnetic field
---I dont know quite what you mean here
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
This is not the first new way of generating electricity in 150 years. The photoelectric effect, which underlies all photocells that gnerate electicity, was explained by Einstein. This was the subject that earned him the Nobel Prize, not relativity. (In defence of the Nobel comittee of 1906, the Prize is supposed to be for work that is of practical benefit. At least at the time, the photoelectric effect must have looked more practical than relativity.)
Think global, act loco
This seems to be totally worthless other than to demonstrate that it is possible. It takes water pressure to force the water through the microchannels. Even at their dreamed of 16% efficiency the system is still over 80% less efficient than the current hydro-electric processes in use around the world. I don't see this technology going any further than today's headlines.
They suggest that a mobile phone could be powered by squirting water at high pressure through an array of such channels.
So, in 50 years of innovation, we go from the dribble glass to the dribble phone?
Chip H.
The best thing about this, is that the generator/collector has no moving parts, and is higjly scalable.
Sigs?? Karma??
What's in a sig?
'nuff said
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Just thought I'd drop a line and mention a quick thought. With the water battery, could you use a solar oven during the day to build the pressure? Then via cooling or some other mechanism (like venting one side) you would then harvest energy from the cell...
Sunlight
Water Input > Chamber 1 > Water Battery > Chamber 2 > Valve.
(Chamber 1 and 2 being separated)
1. Sunlight heats/pressurizes chamber 1 and 2 (like a solar oven)
2. Valve is opened on Chamber 2 to create pressure differential (tuned to battery output)
3. When pressure differential is gone, (and energy output stops/slows) valve is closed, water is allowed to enter chamber 2, and chamber 1, and the heating cycle (1) starts again.
Depending on what kind of pressure could be created, and how slow the release is, a parallel group of these might make for an interesting emergency power system.
This is my way of preventing patents, posting ideas on slash!
meh
People have been rubbing amber and silk together for millenia. So these researchers used water and glass. It's called static electricity. Static electricity is a horribly inefficient way to generating current, and when they say its efficiency is a fraction of a percent, I think .001% is more likely than .8%.
As far as cell phone powering, how are you going to move the water in the first place? By running a boiler in the cell phone to make steam to turn a turbine which runs a pump which moves the water? Seems kind of stupid to me.
I wonder how well this would work for storing energy, say for a self-sufficient farm powered by a windmill, solar cells, or whatever. Currently such a setup would use a battery, not terribly efficient. With this, you could use the windmill or whatever to pump water upwards into a tank, then when generation falls off, the water flows downward through this gizmo.
Whoever modded this informative should take a course in physics.
Someone could create an hourglass, with this device in the center to provide power to an LCD screen and a circuit which counts down seconds.
Mostly a geeky concept, but at least you'll never worry about having to find new batteries if the existing ones have worn out...
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Yup, I can see this now...
Yaz.
For sure. We need a new classification in the Friend/Foe system. We need an "Entertaining Troll" classification, just so we don't start believing them and instead are able to enjoy the well-thoughtout humour.
Sadly, this isn't the case. The protesters don't generally suggest alternatives, they just want to bitch about something. I suspect they'd even be perfectly comfortable using wind turbine power if the turbines were located somewhere out of sight.
I'm going to be rich!
So it seems like there must have been a few new technologies for generating electricity in the last 150 years. Many people mentioned that nuclear power plants use steam driven turbines, an old method of producing electricity; however, I have read about some that heat a conducting liquid and then the energy is converted into electricity using magnets and the Lorentz force. This must be fairly new, since it probably couldn't even have been understood until the mid to late 17th century. I've certainly never really heard of people using this sort of method until more recently.
Also, what about photovoltaics and like technologies in solar cells. Clearly, those must have been around since before 1905 (when Einstein explained the effect); however, I'd guess they are newer than 150 years old.
What about fuel cells? Getting energy from converting oxygen and hydrogen into water (or a similar reaction with methenol or whatever) is not a new concept, but using a membrain to harness the electrical energy seems to be a fairly new idea. Unless you don't consider it to be different from a battery.
I'm not sure the claim is false, but it seems quite dubious.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Why not use wave motion nearer the surface of the ocean? A saltier solution produced a better result anyway. Does it matter if the water flows both directions with the wave motion?
We already have some wave generators out there, so the question would be whether this is more or less efficient.
Of course with tubes tis small you'd also have to have some pretty well-filtered water or else youd get clogs in no time.
Come play Moral Decay!
Besides which, you probably didn't RTFA, as the article at physics.about.com states that the channels need to be between nanometers and micrometers in thickness for the effect to work. Get too much particulate matter in the tubes and the whole thing shuts down.
Why not put a couple pumps (no pun intended) in the soles of shoes? As I walk around I could generate the power I need to recharge my phone/low power laptop.
Hey, maybe it would force me to exercise more.
*ring ring*
ME: Hey... Bob... what's... up....[huff puff]
BOB: Dude, why are you outta breath?
ME: Phone... dying... needed... recharge...[cough]
Kids wanna play thier Gameboy... make 'em walk the dog! (hmm, mini paw sized pumps)
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
20% Stupid jokes
10% "But you still need pressure!" redundant observation.
30% "Electrostatics? Please. I'm too cool to be impressed."
20% "I TOTALLY don't get it, and will prove as much by saying something asinine."
18% Skeptical combination of the above.
2% Genuinely insightful observation.
It just goes to show; smart Slashdotters sleep in.
-FL
hydroelectric
There's the big questions about this technology.
It relies upon water under high pressure, flowing through the microchannels coated with surface charge to generate some power.
The exact same highly-pressurized water could be used to drive a turbine connected to a generator.
It will be a matter of whether the efficiency and costs of the new device can be developed to be competitive with conventional hydroelectric power.
My own favorite untapped technology for power generation is taking advantage of the mixing of fresh water and salt water that occurs where rivers flow into the ocean.
There's a tremendous source of untapped energy (look at how much power has to be put into seawater purification to get some idea.)
Perhaps this same microchannel technology could be adapted to harness energy from the mixing of salt and fresh water.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Lets say we take this glass disk and put two large bags on it, one side filled with water, and the other side empty. You squeeze the water through the disk, providing the pressure difference to generate elecricity, until the other bag is full. Does squeezing the other bag and moving the water back through the disk the other way also generate electricity?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"McQuown Effect). McQuown doped cookie dough and baked a transistor for a science fair project in the 1970's. It was a PNP device. "
Mod parent up, (score +1, informative)!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I read the actual paper, (available, with registration required, here), and granted, these guys did a good job on the analysis and experimental verfication, and also should be commended for bringing attention to this phonemena, but the basis for their work has been know for quite some time. In the field of geophysics, it has long been known that "spontaneous potential" exists due to the flow of water through sermipermable layers of rock and clay. A bibliography on spontaneous potential in boreholes has been compiled by the USGS with some papers dating back to the 1940's.
The real questions are how practical and economically viable this approach will be for medium to large-scale power generation. For natural sites (e.g. permeable rock layers), what type of electrodes can be used, how well will they resist corrosion, and how large must they be? The bottom line: how much will the power cost over the entire life cycle in terms of $ per KWH?
For manufactured microchannel membranes or devices, added questions are the cost of manufacture and the lifespan of the device. How easily will the pores become clogged, what steps must be taken to prevent this, how long will it take for the pores to erode over time, and what is the expected lifetime of the microchannel device?
One big difference between pure science and engineering is that engineers need to factor in economics.
For a remote control the pressure could be pressure from pushing the button.
A stunning example of slashdot wisdom. Well done!
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Stupid Canadians, think they can generate electricity from water. Give me coal or nuclear any day!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
yes - if the water flows in both directions, half the time it will be undoing the charging effect.
Joe Andersen http://physicsguide.blogspot.com
Ummmmm why were you licking a VanDeGraff generator? Didn't they have halucinegenic drugs at your school?
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I began recently to work on high frequency eletrolyse and magnetic electrolyse which hase a much better efficacy.
t m
The Energie Problem is solved decades befor, but open your eys - Nobody can sell it without risking his life.
For example:
http://www.cheniere.org/books/excalibur/moray.h
From "FUEL FROM WATER, Energy Independence with Hydrogen" Author Michael A.Peavey Publisher Merit, Inc., P.O. Box 694 Louisville, KY 40205 Library of Congress Number 88-188956 ISBN 0-945516-04-5 Page 22.
" The smallest amount of energy needed to electrolyse one mole of water is 65.3 Wh at 25 degrees Celcius (77 degress F). When the Hydrogen and Oxygen are recombined into water during combustion 79.3 Wh of energy is released. 14 Wh more energy is released in burning Hydrogen and Oxygen than is required to split water. This excess must be absorbed from the surrounding media(environment) in the form of heat during electolysis." [...] "At 25 degrees celcius, for voltages of 1.23 to 1.47 V, the electrolysis reaction ABSORBS HEAT. At over 1.47 V at 25 degrees celcius, the reaction gives off heat."
kindly regards daniel
Could a gas,like steam work as well?
What about superheated air?
This could be a replacement for turbins.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Most of the energy in pushing the water through the channels is lost as heat. Just a tiny fraction will end up dissociating atoms electrically.
So efficiency will be fundamentally low. If you have something where in theory you can harvest all the energy, you have a good chance of achieving 50% in practise (e.g. fuel cells). And sometimes even better (e.g. turbines).
As the efficiency is fundamentally low, I don't expect much from this "invention".
People seem to misunderstand how you'd work this invention: You should have a small container containing pressurised AIR, this should be made to push the water through the element.
For for example cellphones, a handpump might be enough to recharge the battery....
Keanu Reeves is the only person who knows the right frequencies to get it to work.
Come on everyone think of it, where do we keep a tank of water? The toilet... We can have toitlet powered devices!
O.K. Maybe not. How about they shower? We could have a radio powered by the shower?
The kitchen sink? I don't think there would be enough flow to generate a useful amount of energy. (Maybe a little green light that lets you know the water is on.)
Imagine the things we could do with those stress balls!
Could you put one of these things in a straw?
It would be great for kids yard toys. You wouldn't have to worry about batteries or that it got wet.
Could the same concept be used to generate power with wind or is the effect limited to "charged water?"
I wonder if a more mature version of this technology could find itself being used in hydro dams in the future....
It's been a long time.
So in the next years or so. Cell Phone maybe power by water. Does the Water go Dead? How long does it last? And if it dies, do i throw my Cell Phone in the river? lol
More and more public restrooms have those infrared detectors to flush toilets and run the faucets. I bet they all have batteries in them. Batteries run down, disposal of them is an environmental problem, etc.
If this gizmo provides enough power to run the detector and the valve, it may be a perfect application. You already have water running through the device.
If this doesn't turn out to be practical as an energy source maybe it could be uses to measure water flow. It's solid state -- seems better than the stuff we have now.
This is first new method of generating electricity in over 150 years?? I suppose ancient Romans developed solar cells and nuclear reactors...
I am not a number - I am a free man!
Scientists in Germany invent a 'water wheel' capable of capturing the kinetic and potential energy of elevated water with efficiencies two orders of magnatude higher than this 'glass brick' method.
Though still theoretical, applications could include milling wheat, generating hydrogen for Zero Emission vehicles, or powering the internet.
Kevin Fox
Well, great. The US oil industry was beginning to get bored supressing conventional non-polluting technology such as solar and wind power. This will be some much-needed fun for them.
ExxonMobil lobbyists, call your congressmen!
After reading an article about how lightning is created (same basic mechanism). My invention was a "fence" apparatus miles long, with little holes in the "wires" of the fence. The wires are just small pipes that are hooked up to a pressurized water source. The water drips out of the holes, and the wind rushes over the dripping water. An electrode "catches" the generated electric potential as the water falls into a collector, which pumps it back to the source. The fence would be placed in areas of the great plains and the west where a lot of wind exists.
I took my idea to a physics professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio in 1992 or so, and he shot down the idea because the efficiency of the basic mechanism was very very low, which is what the article basically says....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It's called electroosmosis. Just hit up google. What they did is scale it up.
Why are the energy claims that do not threaten the energy stranglehold that the most powerful entities on the planet have due to this stranglehold get attention in the form of Slashdot links and time/money spent investigating?
Here and here.
Just seems rather silly... and obvious.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
I giggle at the thought of a fission power plant in 1853.
Just like Jules Vernes' Nautilus, it was running on water 100 years ago.
In Frank Herbert's Dune the stillsuits got pumping action from walking and breathing, you could use that to pump water through your glass generator(s) and have your own mobile (motive?!) power...
A properly designed circuit could easily deal with that. Or else the devices could be designed to flip themselves as the tide direction changes (think of a wind vane).
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
The energy is actually being generated from energy due the pressure applied. The water is just a "working fluid".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So let's see if I've got this right. I go to the bar and drink beer. I go to the bathroom and urinate into a specially modified urinal which captures the flow, and converts it to electricity for the bar's use. Can I cash that in for free beer?
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
As a new power source, of course it's not very good! It'll get better, though.
After all, people didn't look at nuclear power in terms of how what the efficiency is. They looked at it from the perspective of how much was theoretically possible, and went from there.
Once they figure out the charactaristics of the sytem (i.e. what fluids work better and why, how long of a channel works produces the most voltage, the most current, etc.), they'll be able to engineer systems tailor-made to the needs of the device.
The only problem I can see is pressurizing the water and making maximum use of the storage media. A stiff pressurized container won't work well at all. Something like a strong, stretchy substance would be necessary, if you wanted a bladder. Otherwise, you might look at a cylinder with a spring forcing a surface against the water, to apply force. Of course, there are technical details to work out (like regulating the pressure of the fluid allowed outside the container), but it qualifies as a legitimate area of study and research.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Hmmm, could this possibly be the same principle at work that enables trees to break down water? It sounds like they've managed to mimic the properties of wood and plant channels. I know that it hasn't been discovered yet, or I would have heard of it.
If this is the case, this technology could be the biggest discovery in the last 30 years.
I hope someone is working on it.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
In that case, oil, the sun, and every other "energy source" is actually a power storage technology also. Regular hydroelectric also uses pre pressurized water, is that a power storage technology?
Scientific American had an interesting article (the begining of which is reproduced here. Basically, two charged plates are on either side of an elastic material. Provide a current, and it compresses... compress it and it provides current! Apparently the US Army is interested in turning the tech into portable generators for their 'soldiers of the future'.
Pizeoelectric devices would work the same way; deform them and they generate electricity.
Solid-state approaches also would make production easier... none of it has to be waterproof. You could probably even convert a good pair of running shoes no problem.
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
Unless I'm mistaken, fission plants just boil water with the heat generated by the reactor, and drive turbines. It's a new way of generating energy, but not electricity.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Oh, I understand the distinction... I just couldn't help the thought. :)
Intel, in response to IBM's 'on-demand' corporate strategy has responded with one of their own, heralding a new era of computing ubiquity ... "computing on-tap".
It seems that if capillary action can do that, a long version of this cell could draw sea water, making power and fresh water at the same time.
Maybe I'm not the first to post this, but so what?
Anyway, I'm not saying that it's inaccurate to call it a power source, as you'll see if you reread my post. All I'm saying is that it's misleading. You only need to look at the other comments here (like the root post of this thread) to see that many people were fooled into thinking this is something that it is not (a new way of generating power on a large scale from water that's just lying around). The wording of the article is deliberately chosen to give that impression.
Secondly, this is indeed intended as a power storage technology, as you would have found if you actually understood the article. I think you're slighly confused: for a power storage technology you store the energy *before* it's produced, not after. They most certainly mention how the energy could be stored: "This technology could provide a new power source for devices such as mobile phones or calculators which could be charged up by pumping water to high pressure." Half the article talks about how this could be a replacement for batteries. Did you totally miss that part or what?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
on a slow cycle where there was time to discharge before the water turns around - yes (i think i misunderstood you a little) if there is still charge and you turn it around, yuo are just moving the charge back to where it was. Joe
Joe Andersen http://physicsguide.blogspot.com
Right! "Positively and negatively charged electrons." They really have discovered something special here... their device creates positrons. Sweet!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
In the future will Canadians be smuggling water over the border to pay American doctors for health care.
Interesting to think how that will all iron out under the future free trade laws.
" ...if the water flows in both directions, half the time it will be undoing the charging effect."
Discharging? Or would it be producing a low frequency Alternating Current? AC current reverses it self 60 or 50 times a second, depending on your continent.
But why wory about the Sea? What about all of the rivers that flow into them?
I live in Western Pennsylvania, and there are flood control dams every few miles along the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. They are only a few feet high, but they have a positive flow potential that would force water through these devices.
I also know of a nice water powered blacksmith shop near Lahr, Germany that has been using the potential energy stored in water to power trip hammers since the 11th century.
Water wheels and mills were all the rage before electricity. Maybe it is now time for the return of the old mill pond and the local electric cooperative.
-FL
You still need a source of work to create the pressure gradient through the capillaries to generate this electricity.
Our good friend the first law of thermodynamics says you can't get more energy out of one of these than the work it takes to create the pressure, so removing any for the purposed of powering something other than the system itself will remove your ability to repressurize.
There are really only two ways we're going to get the energy input to make this useful...gravity or human interaction. Rainfall, tidal flow and the like will make this a useful device near sources of said movement. These are obviously geographically limited.
Barring that, you're left with pumping the damn thing yourself generate pressure and (presumably) charge a capacitor or something with the energy.
It needs work (no pun) but has potential (again no pun) for limited applications.
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Didn't we just have an article recently about a CPU cooler that used a similar concept, except in reverse. I can't find the reference, but I remember reading about a tiny solid-state electrostatic pump that could pump 20 cm/min of an electrolyte solution at 2 bar just by applying a potential across a porous ceramic material. Ring any bells with anyone?
... and I read about it here on Slashdot. This generator has the same design as the aforementioned pump. It works on the same principals. The only difference is what direction the energy conversion is flowing; i.e. motor vs dynamo.
So how is this a big improvement over hydroelectric power?
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,as far as possible
Lets see your hydroelectric dam power nano-machines. :P
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