Monday, February 11, 2008

Energy is everywhere. In the sun, wind, and now rain.

"Energy is everywhere. In the sun, wind, and now rain.

Researchers have developed a technique that harvests energy from rain showers and converts it into electricity. The technology could work in industrial air conditioning systems, where water condenses and drops like rain."

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/07/raindrops-energy.html

"The method relies on a plastic called PVDF (for polyvinylidene difluoride), which is used in a range of products from pipes, films, and wire insulators to high-end paints for metal. PVDF has the unusual property of piezoelectricity, which means it can produce a charge when it's mechanically deformed.

Guigon and his team embedded electrodes into a thin membrane of PVDF, just 25 micrometers thick (it takes 1,000 micrometers to make one millimeter). Then they bombarded the sheet with drops of water varying in diameter from 1 to 5 mm."

No comments: