Electricity from water. In a way you'd never guess . . .
University of Alberta scientists announced yesterday that water produces electricity when pumped at pressure through tiny microchannels. The water does not spin a turbine or in any way use mechanical or chemical energy to produce power. Electricity is drawn instead from "the work done to push the liquid through the channel." Fascinating reading but I am not a scientist and I am still baffled by how this process works. I'll keep reading and then I'll let you know if I come up with a simple explanation. Here's something from the press release and two links:
"A new way of generating electricity from flowing water could mean that in the future you will never have to charge up your mobile phone again. Instead of a normal battery, mobile phones could be fitted with a battery that uses water -- you just need to pressurise it regularly."
"Research published today by the Institute of Physics journal, Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, reveals 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 research team from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, have created a new source of clean non-polluting electric power with a variety of possible uses, ranging from powering small electronic devices to contributing to a national power grid."
"The research was led by Professor Daniel Kwok and Professor Larry Kostiuk from the University of Alberta. The project started as a simple conversation between Kostiuk, a thermodynamicist, and Kwok, a nanofabrication researcher. With the assistance of two graduate students, who benefited first-hand from the teachings of their supervisors as well as contributed to the work, the team was able to illuminate a real light bulb by exploiting the coupling between electrokinetic phenomena and the hydrodynamics of liquid flow."
http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=632/journal/JMM (external link)
http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/ (external link)