Almost Free Energy at last ? Energy from Evaporating Water .

Published on Jun 16, 2015 Simple devices made of bacterial spores, glue, and plastic may allow capturing energy from evaporating water. This video explains the motivation behind our work and the exciting process of scientifically driven innovation.

The contents are based on the publication: "Scaling up nanoscale water-driven energy conversion into evaporation-driven engines and generators", Nature Communications, 6:7346 (2015).

dx.doi.org... For more information, www.extremebio.org...

The man to thank to :

The unseen power of microbes | Ozgur Sahin, Ph.D | TEDxColumbiaSIPA

Layman Summary to the best of my understanding : We will all get free energy from water evoparation .


www.extremebio.org...

If you take out a calculator and a yellow pad, you can easily see how much energy is involved in evaporation of water.

It ain't gonna replace a gas fired power plant.

originally posted by: 23432
Layman Summary to the best of my understanding : We will all get free energy from water evoparation .

The first video says "renewable energy", not free energy. You need a heat source to evaporate the water, the sun will do.

We have had energy from the sun for decades, one that source that I find interesting is it takes energy out of the air, which is used by the Atmos Clock. So if we could do this for decades, why do we still have monthly gas and electric bills? Because while the atmos clock extracts enough energy to power the clock, nobody has ever figured out how to extract enough energy to power a car using that method.

I suspect that similarly with this evaporation technology, that powering a toy car is one thing, but powering a real car is something else. You can power a toy car with hamsters running on their exercise wheel but just because this works on a toy car doesn't mean it's a good technology for powering real cars. (The hamsters or the evaporation).

It is an interesting technology though, so thanks for sharing it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too much for applications other than niche applications like the Atmos clock-type niche application for that type of renewable energy.

Evaporation already has commercial applications in reducing large energy bills though, if the water is clean cheap and plentiful:

Pre-Cooling of HVAC & Refrigeration Units through Evaporative Fogging

How Pre-Cooling works

• A customized evaporative fogging system is attached to each air conditioning unit which lowers the temperature of the air entering the condenser. This allows the condenser to reject more heat which lowers head pressures and compression ratios, thereby causing the compressor to draw less power, consume less energy, require less maintenance and last longer!

• The pre-cooling application performs best at the exact time when commercial buildings require increased refrigeration system performance – that is , during peak heat. In fact, the higher the ambient temperature, the greater the energy and cost savings potential.
Benefits of pre-cooling air conditioner condenser coils

Reduced energy costs
Reduced air conditioner maintenance costs
Increased peak cooling capacity
Reduced energy (kWh) usage
Reduced peak energy demand (kW)

originally posted by: Bedlam
If you take out a calculator and a yellow pad, you can easily see how much energy is involved in evaporation of water.

It ain't gonna replace a gas fired power plant.

Evoparation is done by the sun & wind .

The calculations you are looking for is in the second video , already done by Ozgur Sahin .

originally posted by: Bedlam
If you take out a calculator and a yellow pad, you can easily see how much energy is involved in evaporation of water.

It ain't gonna replace a gas fired power plant.

Unfortunately you're one of the few people posting on ATS who knows how to do that.

I congratulate you for saying more or less the same thing I did but a lot more succinctly!

originally posted by: 23432
The calculations you are looking for is in the second video , already done by Ozgur Sahin .

Did he say anything that contradicts bedlam's statement? If so what? I don't think he did. His calculations were more about force than energy, two different things.

Neat, not for energy generation but for doing work.

Now someone just need to make an oil based polymer hydrogel to replace the pesky spores

But yeah free energy? nope

oh and



hardly the first power from evaporation thing

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
Did he say anything that contradicts bedlam's statement? If so what? I don't think he did. His calculations were more about force than energy, two different things.

Pound of Spores could lift a car weighing a ton 1 meter in the air .



I don't know whether there is a conflict or not with Bedlam's statement . I can see some large scale power generation units in the open seas , lakes , rivers .

a reply to: 23432

Scientist always says "white lies", hey says that but he omits things like the surface area required to put a pound of spores to move a car 1 meter, i bet its a few square miles

originally posted by: Indigent
a reply to: 23432

Scientist always says "white lies", hey says that but he omits things like the surface area required to put a pound of spores to move a car 1 meter, i bet its a few square miles

Generally speaking , I do agree with you .

But there is something to this particular technology . If you have the time , you should watch the videos . very interesting they are imho .

1.25 seconds of video explains it .

I saw this article and thought the same thing. When people think about power generation they think of huge power plants, but you need to think of this in micro's instead of macro's. Like embedding this technology in the millions on a small scale, you also gain very high redundancy.

I imagine this could be embedded in say the frame of a house or in the framework of a vehicle or suitcase, millions of little power producers providing energy just from doing its thing. Very cool in my eyes.

originally posted by: 23432

Evoparation is done by the sun & wind .

Actually, it's done by water molecules having enough energy to break through the surface tension in this case, but you get that energy from sun, and reduce the vapor pressure over the water by wind.

The calculations you are looking for is in the second video , already done by Ozgur Sahin .

I learned them long ago, in physics 101. And there's not a lot of energy to be had.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
His calculations were more about force than energy, two different things.

Ah. If he did THAT, then he's trying to mislead you.

originally posted by: 23432
1.25 seconds of video explains it .

If you lift a car that weighs a ton a meter in the air with the hydration pressure of a pound of spores (not a very fast lift, I might add) then you'll have to apply enough energy to that pound of spores to remove the water from them, unless you just plan to chuck them.

That's going to require sun and area.

It's no more miraculous or free than using mirrors and a boiler, or a photovoltaic cell. It's still going to require the same energy input (and more, for losses) to the system that you get out of it. In this case, the energy required to dehydrate the spores. And you can only do that so many times before you have to make more, because they're going to be damaged. And that'll require energy and food for the underlying bacteria you're using to reproduce and sporulate.

originally posted by: Bedlam
If you take out a calculator and a yellow pad, you can easily see how much energy is involved in evaporation of water.

It ain't gonna replace a gas fired power plant.

Don't you think that he made that point clear?

Free energy? Easynews.nationalgeographic.com...

Disregard,deny, ignore

originally posted by: Aliensun

Don't you think that he made that point clear?

Apparently not - "Layman Summary to the best of my understanding : We will all get free energy from water evoparation . "

Well, yeah, but along that line we could all get free energy by pinwheels on kites. If you mean "a trivial amount of energy for a comparatively large effort".

originally posted by: disregard
Free energy? Easynews.nationalgeographic.com...

Disregard,deny, ignore

Actually, that's similar to the spore thing but in a much more useful form. Although they don't mention that it works by converting fresh water to brackish.

And there's that little issue with having to place this thing at the mouth of the river and divert most of the flow through the plant. And that it'll grossly alter the river-ocean transition area biome.

But other than that, hell yeah.

originally posted by: Bedlam
Ah. If he did THAT, then he's trying to mislead you.

originally posted by: Bedlam
If you lift a car that weighs a ton a meter in the air with the hydration pressure of a pound of spores (not a very fast lift, I might add)

I don't know if he's trying to mislead or not, but he's not talking about energy. Lifting a car a meter in the air is work, and to make it energy, he would have to specify how long it would take, which he doesn't say, but I agree it would probably take a while to evaporate enough water to lift a car 1 meter.

originally posted by: 23432

Published on Jun 16, 2015 Simple devices made of bacterial spores, glue, and plastic may allow capturing energy from evaporating water. This video explains the motivation behind our work and the exciting process of scientifically driven innovation.

The contents are based on the publication: "Scaling up nanoscale water-driven energy conversion into evaporation-driven engines and generators", Nature Communications, 6:7346 (2015).

dx.doi.org... For more information, www.extremebio.org...

The man to thank to :

The unseen power of microbes | Ozgur Sahin, Ph.D | TEDxColumbiaSIPA

Layman Summary to the best of my understanding : We will all get free energy from water evoparation .


www.extremebio.org...

This energy is as free as energy from solar, water, wind power.

What is the efficiency and cost compared to photovoltaics?