The undersea vehicle is called Solo-Trec or, if you prefer the detailed name, the Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging vehicle, and was tested for more than three months off the Hawaiian Islands, a period during which it only consumed the energy harnessed from the sea's temperature changes. According to the group of researchers currently working on the project, this is the first vehicle that can work solely on ocean thermal energy.

"People have long dreamed of a machine that produces more energy than it consumes and runs indefinitely," said NASA's Jack Jones, a Solo-Trec co-principal investigator, in a statement, quoted by CNET. "While not a true perpetual motion machine, since we actually consume some environmental energy, the prototype system demonstrated by [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and its partners can continuously monitor the ocean without a limit on its lifetime imposed by energy supply."

Most of you may know that from a certain depth below, the ocean water starts to cool, with some pretty extreme temperatures being found in deeper oceanic waters. The Solo-Trec simply navigates between these areas and warmer, shallower ones, thus gathering the energy it needs in order to function. It does so with the help of a waxy substance called phase-change material, stored in 10 external tubes. This substance melts and expands, then cools and contracts, according to the temperatures that it is exposed to. When the phase-change material expands, pressurized oil inside this machine drives a hydraulic engine which recharges the batteries that Solo-Trec uses for power.

The Solo-Trec weighs 183 pounds (83 kg) and during the tests it has made more than 300 dives form the surface of the ocean to the depth of 1,640 feet, while all this time it had enough energy in order for its buoyancy controls, GPS and communication instruments to work properly.

For now the Solo-Trec is only a prototype but it can be developed into a full-functioning sea vehicle capable of helping researchers study underwater life, climate changes or even underwater surveillance.


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