Oct
9
Electricity Found In Power Plant Cooling Water
October 9, 2013 | Leave a Comment
Initially the finding was that droplets could jump from a condenser surface – a component at the heart of most of the world’s electricity-generating power plants – provided there is a mechanism for enhancing the efficiency of heat transfer on those condensers, and thus improving power plants’ overall efficiency.
The new finding now provides a way of enhancing that efficiency even more: By applying the appropriate charge to a nearby metal plate, jumping droplets can be pulled away from the surface, reducing the likelihood of their being pushed back onto the condenser either by gravity or by the drag created by the flow of the surrounding vapor toward the surface.
The finding could lead to more efficient power plants and a new way of drawing power from the atmosphere. The finding is reported in a paper in the journal Nature Communications written by MIT postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, mechanical engineering professor Evelyn Wang, graduate student Daniel Preston and Ryan Enright, who was a postdoc at MIT and the University of Limerick and is now at Bell Labs Ireland, part of Alcatel-Lucent.
Superhydrophobic Surface Releases Charged Droplets being shed from a superhydrophobic surface. The light band in the photo’s center center, reveals the charging of the droplets. Image Credit: Nenad Miljkovic and Daniel Preston, MIT.
Miljkovic explained that the finding is an extension of previous work by the MIT team. That work showed that under certain conditions, rather than simply sliding down and separating from a surface due to gravity, droplets can actually leap away from the surface. This occurs when droplets of water condense onto a metal surface with a specific kind of superhydrophobic coating and at least two of the droplets coalesce: They can then spontaneously jump from the surface, as a result of a release of excess surface energy.
Miljkovic said during the research, “We found that when these droplets jump, through analysis of high-speed video, we saw that they repel one another mid-flight. Previous studies have shown no such effect. When we first saw that, we were intrigued.”
In order to understand the reason for the repulsion between jumping droplets after they leave the surface, the researchers performed a series of experiments using a charged electrode. Sure enough, when the electrode had a positive charge, droplets were repelled by it as well as by each other; when it had a negative charge, the droplets were drawn toward it. This established that the effect was caused by a net positive electrical charge forming on the droplets as they jumped away from the surface.
The charging process takes place because as droplets form on a surface, Miljkovic says, they naturally form an electric double layer – a layer of paired positive and negative charges – on their surfaces. When neighboring drops coalesce, which leads to their jumping from the surface, that process happens “so fast that the charge separates,” he says. “It leaves a bit of charge on the droplet, and the rest on the surface.”
The experimentation shows, “Now we can use an external electric field to mitigate” any tendency of the droplets to return to the condenser, “and enhance the heat transfer,” Miljkovic said.
Even more interesting Miljkovic observes another possible new application. By placing two parallel metal plates out in the open, with “one surface that has droplets jumping, and another that collects them . . . you could generate some power” just from condensation from the ambient air. All that would be needed is a way of keeping the condenser surface cool, such as water from a nearby lake or river. “You just need a cold surface in a moist environment,” he says. “We’re working on demonstrating this concept.”
It’s quite startling to learn of the new finding. It’s essentially electricity from the nature of molecules’ behavior in a common environment. It isn’t the commonly experienced static, nor is it some esoteric energy from nothingness. Its real, and now it can be measured and harnessed, but there isn’t a whole lot of it so far.
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