Developed by NASA, the US Navy and university researchers, the SOLO-TREC, the first robotic underwater vehicle to be powered entirely by natural, renewable, ocean thermal energy, was recently demonstrated off the coast of Hawaii.

The Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer – Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC) unmanned vehicle uses a thermal recharging engine powered by the natural temperature differences found at different ocean depths. Scientists and researchers are hopeful that this technology will help us learn a lot more about the ocean, which covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, and its depths.

The SOLO-TREC could be the first of a new generation of autonomous underwater vehicles that are not restricted by energy supply limitations. These vehicles could be used for the indefinite monitoring of underwater ocean climate and marine animals, or for exploration and surveillance purposes.

The prototype is equipped with science instruments, a GPS receiver, a communications device and a buoyancy-control pump, apart from its thermal recharging engine. The engine itself uses a remarkable selection of waxy substances known as phase-change materials, which expand and contract with the change in the ocean temperature, causing it to pump a hydraulic motor that generates the electricity the machine needs to run indefinitely.

So far, it has completed more than 300 test dives, reaching a depth of 500 meters. Just last month, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, were able to complete the first three-month ocean endurance test with the prototype vehicle.

Since we know so little about the ocean, many other scientists are simultaneously looking to the ocean to solve many of the human race’s current quandaries. Research is being done that promises to feed the hungry, slow global warming, develop new sources of renewable energy and more. Technology like this could greatly speed up the progress of hundreds of projects already in the works.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about the Environment.