Osmotic Engine: Translating Osmotic Pressure into Macroscopic Mechanical Force via Poly(Acrylic Acid) Based Hydrogels (Adv. Sci. 9/2017)

Manfred Wilhelm and co-workers describe an alternative method to use the difference in salt concentrations to generate energy through the use of hydrogels instead of semi-permeable membranes in article number 1700112. The main advantage of this approach over the conventional osmotic power plant is that hydrogels are much less expensive than high-tech semi-permeable membranes. This means that the hydrogels are inexpensive to replace in case of pollution (e.g. by seaweed).