Self-powered seawater desalination and electrolysis using flowing kinetic energy

we report a totally self-powered seawater desalination and electrolysis system based on the newly invented triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) driven by the kinetic energy of flowing water. Using the power generated by flowing water at a rate of 40 L/min, the self-powered disk TENG exhibits an output current of 0.4 mA and an output voltage of 200 V. The desalination rate reaches 8.2% in 3 h with 0.5 M salt solution and the byproduct of concentrated salty water was split at a hydrogen production rate of 2.6×10−5 mL/s.