---
title: "Here Is the World’s First Engine Driven by Evaporation"
description: "Bioengineers invent a way to harvest energy from water evaporating at room temperature. It's an engine with living parts."
date: "2015-06-17"
modified: "2015-08-13"
authors:
  - name: "Andrew Johnson"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/andrewjohnson"
url: "https://futurism.com/here-is-the-worlds-first-engine-driven-by-evaporation"
categories:
  - "Energy"
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "energy"
---

# Here Is the World’s First Engine Driven by Evaporation

![Default Futurism featured image](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Futurism-Filler-Image.jpg>)

- Using nothing more than a puddle of resting water, the engine, which measures less than four inches on each side, can power LED lights and even drive a miniature car. Better yet, Sahin says, the engine costs less than $5 to build.
- The key to Sahin's astonishing new invention is a new material that Sahin calls HYDRAs. HYDRAs are essentially thin, muscle-like plastic bands that contract and expand with tiny changes in humidity. A pinky finger-length HYDRA band can cycle through contraction and expansion more than a million times with only a slight, and almost negligible, degradation of the material.
- Sahin also created a second engine with his HYDRAs—this one a turbine-style creation that uses the motion of bending HYDRAs to spin a wheel. Placed on top of a miniature car, the entire device slowly ekes forward—again, powered by nothing but evaporating water.