Evaporation Energy

Solar and wind energy technologies have been under constant development in the past years. In present day, high amounts of electricity is produced as a result of these green energies. In the solar sector new breakthroughs are being made, from powering households and businesses to automobiles and airplanes. Wind turbines are installed in “impossible” places such as large bodies of water, showing that there is no limit to the development of this technology.

What has not received so much attention is water, more specifically water evaporation and the possibility of this being researched for electricity production. Columbia University scientists have recently developed a prototype generator that can harness the energy of evaporation. At the core of their research is the bacteria Bacillus, microorganisms commonly found in soil. When these are starved, they form a rigid, dormant spore. In humid conditions the spores absorb moisture from the air, expanding up to 40 percent in volume.

In dry conditions, the process reverses. Changing in size to these proportions is unusual for these microorganisms. It was noticed that their spores act like a contracting muscle, and it was concluded that electrical energy could be conducted from the motion of these spores.

When evaporation energy is scaled up, it is predicted that it could one day produce electricity from giant floating power generators that sit on bays or reservoirs, or from huge rotating machines similar to wind turbines that sit above water.

These findings may be an opening for a completely new energy platform suggesting new ways to produce and store renewable energy. A huge advantage of evaporation energy over wind and solar energy is that evaporation happens continuously throughout the day and night.