Scientific Breakthrough

Electricity from Water? You bet! Snippet:

Mon 20 Oct 2003 3:00am (UK) Scientists Generate Electricity from Water By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News A team of scientists has discovered a completely new way to make electricity from nothing more than flowing water, it was revealed today. The breakthrough, the first new method of electricity production for 160 years, could provide free, clean energy for devices such as mobile phones and calculators. On a large scale, it could conceivably be used to feed power into the national grid. Dr David Lynch, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta in Canada, where the technology was developed, said: “The discovery of an entirely new way of producing power is an incredible fundamental research breakthrough that occurs once in a lifetime.” A “water powered” mobile phone would contain a small reservoir pressurised by a hand pump. Electricity is generated as the water is released and surges through an array of tiny microchannels. The system relies on the natural “electrokinetic” effect of a fluid flowing over a solid surface. An interplay of forces results in a thin layer of water – where it meets the surface – with a net electric charge. This region is known as the Electric Double Layer (EDL). Normally it goes unnoticed, but the Alberta scientists found that forcing water through a channel with a diameter similar to the EDL produces a flowing current. The amount of electricity generated by one microchannel is minute. But millions of parallel channels can produce enough power to operate electronic equipment such as a mobile phone.