Salinity gradient energy

Abstract

Beyond the most common renewable energy sources today exploited for the production of clean energy, salinity gradients power (SGP) has been attracting the increasing interest of scientists and companies involved in the field. This chapter provides an introduction to SGP, reporting a brief history of the technological developments throughout the years, from the beginning to present. A number of different SGP technologies have been developed in the last decades, all based on the concept of harvesting the energy from the controlled mixing of two solutions at different salinities. A theoretical analysis of the energy potential for SGP places this renewable source of energy among those capable of playing a significant role in the energy sector in the next decades. A classification of all SGP processes is also reported on the basis of: mixing process, energy conversion, and transported species. Finally, an outline of all book chapters is presented.