Electrical energy generation through water evaporation using porous membranes

by Patrícia Soares (FEUP, FCUP)

Wednesday 8 May 2024, 14:00 → 15:00 Portugal

Sala de Conferências (Departamento de Física FCTUC)

New sustainable energy solutions are desperately needed to combat climate change. Water, covering more than 71% of Earth’s surface, can become the key asset of this urgent fight. Water evaporation-induced nanogenerators (WEIG; appearing in 2017) have emerged as promising energy generators, since they only rely on the interaction between different water phases (e.g., liquid/gas) with functional materials to generate a continuous power output. In this session, we will discuss the mechanism behind this technology, its characteristics, possible materials to be used, and influencing factors. Then, some results will be presented, as well as possible future work and other applications of this technology.