Energy from evaporating water

[Sanity Claws]

http://qz.com/429309/these-machines-can-capture-a-new-source-of-clean-energy-evaporating-water/

I don't have the science background needed to analyze this article. I was hoping someone here could analyze it and see whether this appears to be breakthrough technology.

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. I’ve looked at it elsewhere

I was not that impressed. Perhaps that is my failing.

Here is a video, demonstrating their creations:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538571/scientists-capture-the-energy-of-evaporation-to-drive-tiny-engines/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Scientists Capture the Energy of Evaporation to Drive Tiny Engines[/font]

[font size=4]Devices produce electricity from spores resting on water’s surface, but practical applications remain distant.[/font]

By Richard Martin on June 16, 2015

[font size=3]…

“We made a lot of compromises in creating this version in hopes of creating a self-sufficient device,” he says. “We know actually that it can be made 100 times more powerful by solving a number of problems.”

Those solutions include adjusting the size of the moisture cavities and the mechanism of the shutters that control the flow of moisture. Sahin believes that arrays of the devices on the surface of lakes or other bodies of water could produce a scalable renewable energy technology, but that is likely years off, if it ever happens at all. One possible use could be to create battery-size “bricks” of spores than can be activated to produce electricity—just add water.

The tiny engines may have no practical applications in the near term, but they’re still a useful demonstration of the ubiquity of natural energy that can—at least in theory—be harnessed by relatively simple and cheap devices.

As Sahin says, unlike solar and wind power, “Evaporation is not intermittent.”[/font][/font]