Slashdot Mirror
Electricity From Salty Water
BuzzSkyline writes "It's possible to produce energy by simply mixing fresh and salty water. Although chemists and physicists have long known about the untapped energy available where fresh water rivers pour into salty oceans — it's equivalent to 'each river in the world ending at its mouth in a waterfall 225 meters [739 feet] high' — the technology for exploiting the effect has been lacking. An Italian physicist seems to have solved the problem with the experimental demonstration of a 'salination cell' that creates power given nothing more than input sources of salty and fresh water. The researcher believes that this renewable, environmentally friendly energy source could be deployed in coastal areas and could provide another addition to the green-tech roster. A paper describing the technology is due to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters."
Quick! Grab all your salt shakers and run to the bathtub!
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
he key ingredient in a salt-water capacitor is "activated carbon," extremely porous carbon made from wood, coal, or coconut shells.
Gilligan could have lived well on that island.
...for pissing in a swimming pool?
I hope the Energizer Bunny owns water fins and a snorkel!
A device that gleans usable energy from the mixing of salty and fresh waters has been developed by University of Milan-Bicocca physicist Doriano Brogioli. If scaled up, the technology could potentially power coastal homes, though some scientists caution that such an idea might not be realistic.
Forget scaling it up. Put one such device in every fresh water toilet bowl.
Too late, Exxon already bought the patent.
PETA and Greenpeace both called and said it'll kill too many endagered fish species.
Dang it! I warned these people. Last month I sent them a letter:
Dear PETA,
While I love animals as much as the next guy, I'm sick and tired of your stupid press releases. You do more harm than good by making animal lovers seem rediculous to the general public.
Therefore, I have no choice but to make you reconsider your PR tactics. Starting next week, any time you issue a press release that does animals more harm than good, I'm going to the pet store, and buying a hampster. Then I'm going to take it out in the parking lot and hit it with a shovel.
Sincerely,
LocalMan57
Maybe a good balance then is to develop solar-powered fish?
My webcomic
This would be a great way to power all those desalinization plants on the coast!
æeee!
I thought our food chain was Sun -> Corn -> Cows/Pigs/Chickens -> Cows/Pigs/Chickens -> Dinner.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
in a car analogy please.
need new "Missed Funny(+1) By *That* Much" moderation....
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I thought our food chain was Sun -> Corn -> Cows/Pigs/Chickens -> Cows/Pigs/Chickens -> Dinner.
We have a backup system:
??? -> Taco Bell -> Dinner.
Well, he tried gerbils, but every time he swung the shovel he hit Richard Gere.
You start sentences "I clubbed that thing" often enough to "have a saying" for it? :)
Get your own free personal location tracker
It isn't a water problem, it's a stupid people problem.
But people are mostly made of water, so now you have a stupid water problem...
My webcomic
And Taco bell is environmentally friendly as they use non-organic material to construct their food out of.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Indeed, the free market will sort it out. Like for instance, dodo eggs got really expensive, so the price went up, fewer people bought dodo eggs, so the price went down... um... hang on.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Laymen don't have PhD's in Chemistry anymore?? This country's really going down the shitter.
Thanks for pointing out my lack of grammar Mr. Commissar.
It is much being appreciated by me.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Dude, I am totally going to put one of these awesome banners on my site!
I donmt understanf i poored five rum nf cokes and this made les ssens each time