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Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource

About 50% of the solar energy absorbed at the Earth’s surface drives evaporation, fueling the water cycle that affects various renewable energy resources, such as wind and hydropower. Recent advances demonstrate our nascent ability to convert evaporation energy into work, yet there is little underst...

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Autores principales: Cavusoglu, Ahmet-Hamdi, Chen, Xi, Gentine, Pierre, Sahin, Ozgur
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28951541
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00581-w
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author Cavusoglu, Ahmet-Hamdi
Chen, Xi
Gentine, Pierre
Sahin, Ozgur
author_facet Cavusoglu, Ahmet-Hamdi
Chen, Xi
Gentine, Pierre
Sahin, Ozgur
author_sort Cavusoglu, Ahmet-Hamdi
collection PubMed
description About 50% of the solar energy absorbed at the Earth’s surface drives evaporation, fueling the water cycle that affects various renewable energy resources, such as wind and hydropower. Recent advances demonstrate our nascent ability to convert evaporation energy into work, yet there is little understanding about the potential of this resource. Here we study the energy available from natural evaporation to predict the potential of this ubiquitous resource. We find that natural evaporation from open water surfaces could provide power densities comparable to current wind and solar technologies while cutting evaporative water losses by nearly half. We estimate up to 325 GW of power is potentially available in the United States. Strikingly, water’s large heat capacity is sufficient to control power output by storing excess energy when demand is low, thus reducing intermittency and improving reliability. Our findings motivate the improvement of materials and devices that convert energy from evaporation.
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spelling pubmed-56150392017-09-28 Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource Cavusoglu, Ahmet-Hamdi Chen, Xi Gentine, Pierre Sahin, Ozgur Nat Commun Article About 50% of the solar energy absorbed at the Earth’s surface drives evaporation, fueling the water cycle that affects various renewable energy resources, such as wind and hydropower. Recent advances demonstrate our nascent ability to convert evaporation energy into work, yet there is little understanding about the potential of this resource. Here we study the energy available from natural evaporation to predict the potential of this ubiquitous resource. We find that natural evaporation from open water surfaces could provide power densities comparable to current wind and solar technologies while cutting evaporative water losses by nearly half. We estimate up to 325 GW of power is potentially available in the United States. Strikingly, water’s large heat capacity is sufficient to control power output by storing excess energy when demand is low, thus reducing intermittency and improving reliability. Our findings motivate the improvement of materials and devices that convert energy from evaporation. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-09-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5615039/ /pubmed/28951541 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00581-w Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Cavusoglu, Ahmet-Hamdi
Chen, Xi
Gentine, Pierre
Sahin, Ozgur
Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
title Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
title_full Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
title_fullStr Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
title_full_unstemmed Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
title_short Potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
title_sort potential for natural evaporation as a reliable renewable energy resource
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5615039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28951541
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00581-w
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