Canadian researchers have demonstrated a new way of producing electricity from flowing water which could provide power for anything from mobile phones to the national grid.

Professors Daniel Kwok and Larry Kostiuk in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta report in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering a new method of generating electric power by harnessing the natural electrokinetic properties of a liquid, such as ordinary tap water, when it is pumped through tiny microchannels.

The technique is based on understanding that when a non-conducting glass container is filled with water, the glass develops a tiny electric charge while the water takes on the opposite charge.

The Canadian researchers hypothesised that if the water was continually pumped through tiny glass tubes, the water would continually sweep away the tiny charge and generate an electric current.

To their delight, they were able to illuminate a real light bulb by exploiting this coupling between an electrokinetic phenomena and the flowing water.

"This discovery has a huge number of possible applications," says Kostiuk. "It could be a new alternative energy source to rival wind and solar power, although this would need huge bodies of water to work on a commercial scale.

“Hydrocarbon fuels are still the best source of energy but they're fast running out and so new options like this one could be vital in the future.

"This technology could provide a new power source for devices such as mobile phones or calculators which could be charged up by pumping water to high pressure."

Although the power generated from a single channel is extremely small, millions of parallel channels can be used to increase the power output. More work will be needed to further understand this new means to produce power, the researchers say.

University of Alberta Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Dr David T. Lynch described the discovery as “an entirely new way of producing power … an incredible fundamental research breakthrough that occurs only once in a lifetime.”

While some experts have expressed scepticism about the system, saying that it would have to generate more power than was needed to move the water in the first place, others have been cautiously positive.

Dr Jon Gibbins from Imperial College London told BBC News Online he could only see it generating a small amount of power, and might have uses on a nanotech scale.

And Kostiuk agrees. "Its best first application might be in the field of micro-electronic mechanical systems, like labs which are being built on computer chips which require power", he says.

The team hope to develop the prototypical device into a battery for eventual commercial use and have filed a patent application.

The source of the given news and copyrights belong to the ABC Online News

Back