I’m an EE by schooling and I’ve worked in both gas turbine and wind power. Photovoltaics blow my fucking mind. Everything else is just spinning magnets to extract power. PVs are insanely cool
Yeah, it’s a super rad tech! A bit pricey but a neat renewable that almost generates opposite to solar in a way, in that if it’s raining you’re getting some energy in the form of fresh water
Can you ELI10 an intuitive explanation on why the salinity gradient provides energy? It doesn’t make intuitive sense to me and never has. Like why is fresh water mixing with salt water energy positive?
when you dissolve salt in water, then salt splits into ions and each can hold up specific number of water molecules, which means that this water can’t do water things. so on top of salt’s physical presence, there’s a fraction of water that can’t water, or salt water is less watery in a sense than fresh water. now it turns out, if you put a membrane between these two that allows water through but not salt, water goes to higher salinity on its own, because it’s less watery there. how hard it happens is quantified as osmotic pressure and it can be in tens of atmospheres. reverse electrodialysis is just a clever arrangement that avoids energy recovery from low volume of high pressure liquid, like how reverse of reverse osmosis would work
It doesn’t. It’s the thermal energy that is converted to electricity.
The salinity gradient provides an entropy dump. The dialysis machine is built in a way that the only possible way for that entropy to increase is by generating some electricity.
I’m an EE by schooling and I’ve worked in both gas turbine and wind power. Photovoltaics blow my fucking mind. Everything else is just spinning magnets to extract power. PVs are insanely cool
Personally, I like the mirror plants that use the suns energy to superheat salt.
And then use that to boil water. /s
For real, what China is doing with PVs is pretty fucking cool.
Take a look at reverse electro-dialysis.
It’s pushing thermal energy into electricity directly by the force of entropy.
Yeah, it’s a super rad tech! A bit pricey but a neat renewable that almost generates opposite to solar in a way, in that if it’s raining you’re getting some energy in the form of fresh water
Can you ELI10 an intuitive explanation on why the salinity gradient provides energy? It doesn’t make intuitive sense to me and never has. Like why is fresh water mixing with salt water energy positive?
when you dissolve salt in water, then salt splits into ions and each can hold up specific number of water molecules, which means that this water can’t do water things. so on top of salt’s physical presence, there’s a fraction of water that can’t water, or salt water is less watery in a sense than fresh water. now it turns out, if you put a membrane between these two that allows water through but not salt, water goes to higher salinity on its own, because it’s less watery there. how hard it happens is quantified as osmotic pressure and it can be in tens of atmospheres. reverse electrodialysis is just a clever arrangement that avoids energy recovery from low volume of high pressure liquid, like how reverse of reverse osmosis would work
It doesn’t. It’s the thermal energy that is converted to electricity.
The salinity gradient provides an entropy dump. The dialysis machine is built in a way that the only possible way for that entropy to increase is by generating some electricity.
The what now
Entropy is maximized by turning heat into electricity, so electricity appears on the device, as it gets cooler (by a tiny amount).
EDIT: I just noticed that you may be asking about the “reverse electro-dialysis” part :)
It’s a process where fresh and salty water enter a machine, and they get mixed while generating electricity. It’s the reverse of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodialysis
That runs on the same conceptual machine.
(And oh, looks like it’s written together.)
Your name makes me think you’re about to lather your own naked body in vasoline, and hide inside the couch.
I’m known to lather a bit, as a treat.