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Clean energy and clean water are among the major challenges for sustainable development especially in emerging countries. But traditional approaches to electricity generation consume huge amounts of water. In the US and Europe about 50% of water withdrawals are for energy production.
Similarly, producing water for humans via desalination in countries with water scarcity is a huge consumer of energy. It's estimated that in Arab countries around 15% of electricity production is used to produce drinking water.
Now, researchers believe they have found a way to combine these actions in a single device.
Existing state-of-the-art solar panels face physical limits on the amount of sunlight they can actually turn into electricity. Normally about 10-20% of the sun that hits the panel becomes power. The rest of this heat is considered as waste.
In this experiment, the scientists designed a three stage membrane distillation unit and attached it to the back of the photovoltaic (PV) panel.
The membrane essentially evaporates seawater at relatively low temperatures. The researchers were able to produce three times more water than conventional solar stills while also generating electricity with an efficiency greater than 11%. This meant the device was generating nine times more power than had been achieved in previously published research.
"The waste heat from PV panels has really been ignored, no one has thought about it as a resource," said lead author Prof Peng Wang from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
"We use the heat to generate water vapour that gets transported across the membrane and then it condenses on the other side."
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48910569
(Score: 3, Touché) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday July 12 2019, @10:09PM (3 children)
how can it be the "ultimate form" if it doesn't work 24/7/365 anywhere you want it?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:14PM
it's your fault. you're in the wrong place.
contrary to regular belief the sun shines 24 hours.
seems this is the next paradigm shift we have to inflict on humankind after already stressing them by removing the earth as the center of the universe... ^_^
(Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday July 13 2019, @10:43PM
Combined with hyroelectric storage it IS the ultimate form... and despite having a right wing pro coal government my nation (Australia, the driest and flattest continent) is moving away from coal and towards hydroelectric storage paired with wind and solar. It's actually the privatised energy market that is forcing this move. They're turning all the old hydroelectric generating capacity (eg. the 3.7GW Snowwy Mountain Scheme [wikipedia.org], the Wyvenhoe Dam near where I'm living now etc...) into pumped storage. In the south they're pairing the sea cliffs with salt water hydro, and in the north (at Kidston [youtube.com], near the town where I grew up) they're trialing using an old open-cut mine pit as a pumped hydro reservoir. This is interesting because pits all over the country regularly fill with water anyway... it's a problem for mining.
If pumped hydro storage (the storage answer to completely replacing coal with renewables) is feasable at scale in the flattest and driest continent, then it's feasable in much of the world.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 15 2019, @01:19PM
Combined with an electrical distribution grid, storage, and in aggregate, at scale, it would be ultimate.
The sun is always shining somewhere.
The wind is always blowing somewhere.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.