Leidenfrost sublimation engine
When a droplet is put on a heated surface it evaporates and eventually boils, but what if the surface temperature is much higher than the boiling point of water?
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![]() | Click to see Leidenfrost Engine with droplets of water and disks of dry ice. |
Our experiments use a hot turbine-like substrate to instantaneously vaporise a surface layer of water when a droplet touches it. This levitates a droplet on a cushion of its own vapour. The turbine-like surface shape rectifies the direction of flow of the vapour and causes a droplet to rotate. The rotation of the droplet can be used to couple the rotation of a solid. Alternatively, a disk of solid dry ice can be placed directly onto the turbine-like surface and a thin layer of solid dry ice will directly sublimate to vapour. We have used this to create the first example of a sublimation heat engine.
Publications
A sublimation heat engine,
Nature Communications 6 (2015) art. 6390. View open access version
How energy from dry ice could power human colonies on Mars,
The Conversation Online 3rd March 2015.