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DropWise has developed a slippery coating that could dramatically cut the emissions from power plants by making them far more efficient. The coating works with any kind of power plant that relies on steam-driven turbines: coal, natural gas, solar thermal, geothermal, biomass and nuclear.
In these power plants, steam passes through a turbine and is captured in a water condenser that cools it down and turns it into a liquid. This process of hot steam meeting a coolant creates suction that pulls the steam through the turbine to turn the blades and generate electricity. The coating would be applied on the condenser surfaces making it slippery so that the water droplets would be sucked through far more easily instead of building up on the surface, making the turbine much more efficient.
The coating could be added by passing two gasses into the condenser that with the addition of heat would react to form a thin coating within. By controlling the temperature and pressure during the process, DropWise says it can achieve nanometer-level accuracy.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Dr Spin on Wednesday September 02 2015, @09:24AM
People stopped making vacuum driven engines a long time before turbines were invented. It is the steam pressure that drives the turbine.
Of course, it may be the article that is a load of tosh, rather than the invention. Of course, a steam engine has a condenser after the
turbine, and it is possible a hydrophilic coating on the condenser might make it more efficient - ie a smaller condenser might do the job.
Ultimately, the condenser is removing the latent heat of evaporation for the steam, and if it does not have the capacity to do that, then
delivering the latent heat faster is not going to help much. If has the capacity, then the coating is not going to deliver much benefit.
It might make smaller condensers feasible, but that would only affect new builds, and probably only marginally.
If steam is condensing IN the turbine, then things are not going too well.
Looks to me like a solution looking for a problem.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:51PM
Vacuum is a relative term in this case. For a turbine to work, it needs high pressure on one side and low on the other. From the perspective of the high pressure side, the low pressure side is at least a partial vacuum.
The value of this is that it could allow a lower cost capacity expansion in an existing plant and it could reduce the cost of a new plant.
(Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Wednesday September 02 2015, @08:25PM
Also, you could run the turbine without a condenser, just venting the steam to the atmosphere (away from people, presumably). In this case, normal air pressure would create the suction that pulls steam through the turbine. That would be, of course, much less efficient.
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