Scientists Build Toy Car Propelled by Evaporating Water
June 22nd, 2015The rotor version reminds me of nitinol, which uses a temperature differential instead of evaporation.
Via: Guardian:
Machines that harness the power of evaporating water have been created by scientists in the US.
Researchers at Columbia University in New York have built a miniature car that draws on the process to propel itself along, as well as an evaporation-driven generator that powers a flashing LED lamp.
The inventions pave the way for a new generation of renewable devices that extract energy from natural evaporation and transform it into something useful. Ozgur Sahin, who led the research, said the machines were cheap and could draw energy from water as it evaporates continuously from the surfaces of lakes and oceans.
“Water wants to evaporate. It has a desire to evaporate. If you make a surface wet, it will dry up, that’s the natural course,” Sahin said. “What we did was find a way to channel that desire into doing some useful work.”
