A couple of scientists created a prototype device to create renewable energy, which they modeled after seaweed, all to generate kinetic energy as it tenderly swings back and forth under the water, just like seaweed does.
Although it is just concept, despite a working one, if made on a big enough scale, all the smaller filaments would be able to produce enough energy to power major electrical appliances that can be found in coastal areas like coastal power stations, water monitoring equipment, floating buoys, submerged devices, and even a lighthouse.
Although most people assume that renewable energy should come from nature, that’s not always the case, but many times, it is inspired by nature. In fact, there are “intelligent” solar panels that were developed to track the sun across the sky just like sunflowers, known as tidal kites, which actually swim around as fish would. And now, there are energy-generating “seaweed” strips that are doing the same.
The way they work is by generating power through a triboelectric nanogenerators, also called TENGs, that have the ability to ‘harvest the excess energy from the transfer of electrons from one surface to another such as with static electricity.’
Then, four years later, a couple of scientists that were working together managed to develop a seaweed-mimicking power supply settled on using FEP, which is a copolymer that they used to create flexible tubing around the cables, as well we PET, a commonly used plastic, wherein they were both coated in conductive ink.
As the waves in the water move the seaweed TENGs back and forth, the coating is then connected and disconnected repeatedly, which is how electricity is generated. Then, in a recently published paper, the scientists talk about their success by showing how just a few of the seaweed TENGs they built managed to power a string of 30 LED lights.
Since these TENGs don’t produce sounds, heat, or light, the scientists also believe that they don’t have any negative impact on the marine environment. Moreover, considering some of these tidal energy generators are quite large and heavy, which are also full of right angles that sea salt could possibly ruin, yet they claim corrosion should be low since they are continuously moving back and forth.
According to professor in marine engineering and visiting scholar to Georgia Institute of Technology, Minyi Xu, who was one of the developers of the TENGs seaweed, shares that ‘provided the underwater energy is enough to stimulate the TENGs two or three times a second, a tidal farm equaling the size of Georgia could meet the entire world’s energy needs.’
While this may also be impractical, since the means to transfer the energy somewhere else, the scientists also share that just a small portion of seaweed TENGs could manage to provide enough energy to supply an entire coastal city.
See more about the seaweed TENGs in the video below.
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