Osmotic Engine: Translating Osmotic Pressure into Macroscopic Mechanical Force via Poly(Acrylic Acid) Based Hydrogels (Adv. Sci. 9/2017)

Manfred Wilhelm and co‐workers describe an alternative method to use the difference in salt concentrations to generate energy through the use of hydrogels instead of semi‐permeable membranes in article number 1700112. The main advantage of this approach over the conventional osmotic power plant is that hydrogels are much less expensive than high‐tech semi‐permeable membranes. This means that the hydrogels are inexpensive to replace in case of pollution (e.g. by seaweed). [Image: see text]