Energy Out of the Blue: Generating Electric Power from the Clash of River and Sea Water

Habrá que darle seguimiento a esta fuente alterna de energía...

clipped from www.scientificamerican.com In the hunt for alternatives to polluting and climate-warming fossil fuels, attention has turned to where rivers meet the sea. Here, freshwater and saltwater naturally settle their salinity difference, a phenomenon that two pioneering projects in Europe will try to harness to generate clean energy. This concept of "salt power"—also known as osmotic, or salinity-gradient, power—has been kicked around for decades, and now, proponents hope, technology has advanced enough to make it economically competitive. On November 24, the world's first large-scale prototype facility for developing a form of salt power called pressure-retarded osmosis is expected to begin fully operating in Norway. "The big reason to build this thing is to answer important questions [about osmotic power], and while we've done a lot of theoretical studies, we need live experience," says Stein Erik Skilhagen, vice president of osmotic power at Statkraft