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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: 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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