Science & Technology: Steam Turbines Made More Efficient with Slippery Coating

Slippery coating dramatically cuts power plant carbon emissions (Treehugger)

The coating would be applied on the condenser surfaces making it slippery so that the water droplets would be sucked through far more easily instead of building up on the surface, making the turbine much more efficient.

You'd probably never expect to be reading about ketchup and cleaner energy in the same article, but surprisingly there is a connection. Adam Paxson, one of the core team members of LiquidGlide, a company which invented super slippery surfaces for the inside of ketchup bottles among other things, has started a new company called DropWise that has its eyes on using similar technology to clean up the atmosphere.

DropWise has developed a slippery coating that could dramatically cut the emissions from power plants by making them far more efficient. The coating works with any kind of power plant that relies on steam-driven turbines: coal, natural gas, solar thermal, geothermal, biomass and nuclear.

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