When the conversation turns to sources of clean renewable energy, evaporation usually isn’t the first thing to come up, if at all. Yet scientists think evaporation from US lakes and reservoirs could generate almost 70% of the power the nation produces now. Even better, it could meet demand both day and night, solving the intermittency problems posed by solar and wind.
Originally published October 07. 2017: “Evaporation occurs day and night, all year round,” said Ahmet-Hamdi Cavusoglu, a graduate student at Columbia University and lead author of a new study published in the journal Nature Communications that calculated the possible future impact of evaporation as a renewable energy source.
“By controlling evaporation, we can store and control the power output, allowing us to potentially provide reliable energy on demand without needing batteries and other energy storage methods.”
The evaporation engine sits on a shallow pool of blue water. When water on the surface below evaporates, it drives the flaps to move back and forth. When connected to a generator, that motion produces electricity.
To read full article – please click here.
