3 ms·
Electricity generated with water, salt and a three-atoms-thick membrane
- voiceofdead 10y agoLooks like there is something wrong with numbers. Article says 1 square meter will be enough to produce 1MW of energy. But, 1MW of energy will be surely enough to desalinate water for covering 1 sq. m., isn't it? So, place it at sea-side and get "infinite" amount of energy. But, more probable, author of the article confused 1MW and 1mW.
- nucleardog 10y agoThe paper seems to be here, although all I'm getting back right now is long load times and a generic error page: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18593.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... I found a copy elsewhere (won't link, piracy, etc) and it does indeed claim an estimated density of 1 megawatt per square metre. There definitely seems to be something missing here, because another paper I found (http://www.ijesd.org/papers/243-B20001.pdf http://www.ijesd.org/papers/243-B20001.pdf) claims a typical reverse osmosis plant processing seawater uses 3-10kWh to desalinate a cubic metre of seawater. They don't have any information on water consumption (which I'm really curious about), but the break-even point on energy consumption is ~333m^3/hr and, as a layman, that seems like a pretty high flow rate for how they describe this working.
- mrfusion 10y agoSomeone should email the authors of the paper for clarification.
- SeanDav 10y agoOther potential problems are the life span of the membrane, and how to keep it clean. I would imagine that seawater is full of impurities that would cause havoc with a membrane in real world use.