Essay on Osmotic Power Hydroelectricity at Its Finest

Simply mixing fresh water and salt water can create energy. This sentence is read by most and disregarded as a lie, joke, and fantasy; but to few, educated humans it is a reality that is happening right in front of us and has enormous, worldwide potential. This hidden energy that seems so simple, but has such a promising future ahead of it is referred to as osmotic energy. Osmosis is the process by which molecules of a solvent pass through a semi permeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, and this is the process that is taken advantage of in the osmotic power process to create energy. Osmotic energy is a complex, yet simple process, it has advantages that will greatly benefit the world, it has†¦show more content†¦It creates no emissions, thus not pollution; it doesn’t matter what the weather is, it will work; it doesn’t need any initializing energy like a fossil fuel does; it runs consistently without ever stopping, unli ke solar power which requires sunlight, and sunlight is not always present; it doesn’t require costly fossil fuels to start up; and it is quite simply renewable. Aside from all of these benefits it has to the environment, it has some downsides. When water has gone through the energy making process, it is released back into the water as brackish water, which is water with high spikes in salinity. Brackish water makes wherever it goes a difficult place for marine life to live in, which leads to ecosystem decay around the osmotic power plant. Osmotic power plants are also very costly, and costly means that they cost 36 times what a regular coal-powered power plant costs. Lastly osmotic power plants are inefficient, they produce less than 1 watt per square meter, but scientists in Lyon, France have been working on more efficient Boron-Nitride membrane tubes that are nearly 100 times as efficient as the ones used today, and are a possibility in the future. Aside from these new, ex pensive, far off Boron Nitride tubes, Statkraft, the Norwegian company that started the first osmotic power plant, plans to have their plan running at 5 watts per square meter in the near future. The advantages of osmotic