Scientists Find Way to Make Energy from Air Using Nearly Any Material (msn.com) 107
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post:
Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution. The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores...
The air-powered generator, known as an "Air-gen," would offer continuous clean electricity since it uses the energy from humidity, which is always present, rather than depending on the sun or wind... The device, the size of a fingernail and thinner than a single hair, is dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores. The holes have a diameter smaller than 100 nanometers, or less than a thousandth of the width of a strand of human hair. The tiny holes allow the water in the air to pass through in a way that would create a charge imbalance in the upper and lower parts of the device, effectively creating a battery that runs continuously. "We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air," Xiaomeng Liu, another author and a UMass engineering graduate student, said in a statement.
While one prototype only produces a small amount of energy — almost enough to power a dot of light on a big screen — because of its size, Yao said Air-gens can be stacked on top of each other, potentially with spaces of air in between. Storing the electricity is a separate issue, he added. Yao estimated that roughly 1 billion Air-gens, stacked to be roughly the size of a refrigerator, could produce a kilowatt and partly power a home in ideal conditions. The team hopes to lower both the number of devices needed and the space they take up by making the tool more efficient...
It could be embedded in wall paint in a home, made at a larger scale in unused space in a city or littered throughout an office's hard-to-get-to spaces. And because it can use nearly any material, it could extract less from the environment than other renewable forms of energy. "The entire earth is covered with a thick layer of humidity," Yao said. "It's an enormous source of clean energy. This is just the beginning in making use of that."
More information from the Boston Globe.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.
The air-powered generator, known as an "Air-gen," would offer continuous clean electricity since it uses the energy from humidity, which is always present, rather than depending on the sun or wind... The device, the size of a fingernail and thinner than a single hair, is dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores. The holes have a diameter smaller than 100 nanometers, or less than a thousandth of the width of a strand of human hair. The tiny holes allow the water in the air to pass through in a way that would create a charge imbalance in the upper and lower parts of the device, effectively creating a battery that runs continuously. "We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air," Xiaomeng Liu, another author and a UMass engineering graduate student, said in a statement.
While one prototype only produces a small amount of energy — almost enough to power a dot of light on a big screen — because of its size, Yao said Air-gens can be stacked on top of each other, potentially with spaces of air in between. Storing the electricity is a separate issue, he added. Yao estimated that roughly 1 billion Air-gens, stacked to be roughly the size of a refrigerator, could produce a kilowatt and partly power a home in ideal conditions. The team hopes to lower both the number of devices needed and the space they take up by making the tool more efficient...
It could be embedded in wall paint in a home, made at a larger scale in unused space in a city or littered throughout an office's hard-to-get-to spaces. And because it can use nearly any material, it could extract less from the environment than other renewable forms of energy. "The entire earth is covered with a thick layer of humidity," Yao said. "It's an enormous source of clean energy. This is just the beginning in making use of that."
More information from the Boston Globe.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article.
Wonderful news! (Score:5, Funny)
effectively creating a battery that runs continuously
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Re: (Score:3)
It might obey the laws of physics but there's no way they can wire up a billion individual components for a reasonable price. I'd also worry about how long the tiny holes take to get clogged up and/or filled with algae.
Solar panels are much smaller/cheaper.
Re:Wonderful news! (Score:5, Insightful)
"It might obey the laws of physics but there's no way they can wire up a billion individual components for a reasonable price."
We can wire up billions of individual transistors to make a computer chip. Computer chips are relatively cheap compared to their value. If this technology makes it into mass production in a competitive environment, then wiring up billions of them for a reasonable price will happen.
Every modern society wants more energy, and clean energy is even better. There is plenty of demand to foster a reasonably priced supply.
Re:Wonderful news! (Score:4, Interesting)
More specifically, they are proposing the size of a fridge for 1 kilowatt. That is almost the average [eia.gov] power consumption for a US household (1.25 kW). That power consumption is bursty and unevenly spread across the year -- spring and autumn are Miller and need less heating and cooling than winter and summer -- but figure two would probably work if it scales as promised.
However, as an earlier comment pointed out, this smells of perpetual motion (or cold fusion). Humidity by itself isn't a good energy source. TFA compares it to a cloud, but a cloud generates lightning by static electricity from the movement of particles and vapor against each other: it's effectively puking energy from wind, not from humidity. So where does this power actually come from?
Re: (Score:2)
If "spring and autumn are Miller" it's no wonder wind is "puking energy".
Re: (Score:2)
Test text debugging a problem with slashdot posting vs. noscript...
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is the energy still comes from 'rubbing' somewhere. The water is just a charge carrier in this story. The device takes a charge from the water, the water then flies off and interacts with other water to regain charge. The general environment has the collective bulk charge so that is the actual battery.
Re:Wonderful news! (Score:4, Funny)
Computer chips are quite small. They are proposing the size of a fridge for one house.
Is that an American fridge or a European fridge?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem after that will be dust and pollution clogging the pores.
Re: (Score:2)
The screen you are looking at has quite a few individual liquid crystals all connected, there is probably over 2 billion in the one you are reading this on.
Yep, but they aren't the size of a fingernail each, can be laid down by chemical deposition, and don't need to be "stacked".
Building this imaginary device would be more like wiring up a billion individual surface-mount components.
Re: (Score:2)
Which would be a great way to do it. Installing surface mount components is easy to automate and efficient.
Realistically, manufacturing gajillions of these things as individual bits would be the impractically expensive part. They're basically capacitors where the dielectric is a porous membrane, so you could probably make them with a reel-to-reel technique or, if you had to, in decent sized slabs. You'r
Re: Wonderful news! (Score:2)
Or make them en masse on a big substrate like a big LCD panel. Then mount a bunch of the panels with a small airgap between them?
Re: (Score:2)
I think the mistake is that the journalist who wrote the article saw a sample they were testing and wrote about it as "a device." The thing is a stack of a solid electrode, a few microns of porous material on top, and then another electrode. The top electrode can't be solid, but presumably there's some ideal coverage.
It's kind of like an OLED, not a display, but just a simple OLED panel. It looks like a good candidate for reel to reel manufacturing.
Re: (Score:2)
As soon as you stack something tapping diffuse energy, you leave layer that has already been drained, stacking with other layers seeking to drain further. The result is something like osmotic pressure. it's not free thermodynamically to stack them, and you starve the other layers of viable sourcesfor energy. I don't expect stacks to work _at all_, anymore than I expect osmotic salt filters to work without an external energy source.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you understand how it works?
Re: (Score:2)
I think so. If you stack the layers, innermost or lowest, less exposed layers will get their air through the other layers that have already had their moisture tapped for energy. It sounds suspiciously as if, for effective power production, it would need to tap a *very* large amount of constantly refreshed, moist air. The energy for that is not free thermodynamically, so I'm very suspicious.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly before it was developed into practical products someone would have to demonstrate that you could stack or (probably better) roll the film. It might not work, but I don't think it's necessarily a show stopper.
The test conditions in their paper suggest you need some airflow, but not much. There's probably a tradeoff between layer spacing, electricity generation and the amount of energy you need to spend circulating air, but the optimum could be useful for some things.
Re: (Score:2)
It's kind of like an OLED, not a display, but just a simple OLED panel. It looks like a good candidate for reel to reel manufacturing.
You still need ~100,000m^2 of "panel".
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you could make big sheets of this stuff it's still 100,000m^2 of substrate.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you got an extra order of magnitude in there somewhere. They report 17 uA / cm^2 at 0.5 V. That's 8.5 x 10^-6 W/cm^2.
8.5 x 10^-6 W/cm^2 * 100^2 =
1 kW / 0.085 W / m^2 = 12000 m^2.
If you were aiming at a 1 m^3 device, which I assume is about their "refrigerator size" you'd need layers 83 microns thick. The film is about 7 microns thick (and probably doesn't need to actually be that much), which gives 70 microns or so for air channels between layers, which is pretty beefy compared to typical air filte
Re: (Score:2)
I think you got an extra order of magnitude in there somewhere.
I did my math based on your "1 cm^2 test units" in the previous posts.
A billion x 1 cm^2 is 100,000m^2.
Whatever: 10,000m^2 of precision-made substrate isn't going to be cheap.
How many solar panels could you buy for that much money?
Re: (Score:2)
It might be worth reading the paper. I posted a link.
The cost of film-based products varies enormously depending on how hard they are to manufacture and how much the materials cost. From plastic sheeting and aluminum foil to lithium ion batteries.
You may not be aware, but it is possible to use several different sources of energy. Solar panels are great (although they used to be extremely expensive). They have some drawbacks though. Complementary method
Re: (Score:2)
there's no way they can wire up a billion individual components
They arguably couldn't literally wire them affordably, but they might be able to use some other bonding method, like conductive epoxy.
Solar panels are much smaller/cheaper.
I am super-duper pro-solar, but if this can be done sustainably then it's another tool in the box. It might be a nice thing to mix with solar in an off grid system, and it may also be viable in those places where solar doesn't really work out. If it functions best when humidity is high, that's also likely a time when solar isn't producing well.
Anywho I want to know what mater
Re: (Score:2)
I am super-duper pro-solar, but if this can be done sustainably then it's another tool in the box.
Agreed. Use solar for every day use and this process to fill in the gaps. Those who whine about solar not working at night would have to find something else since this process can work 24/7.
The only downside I can see is in the winter months in the northern climates. It gets dry in winter so obviously the efficiency of this device would plummet. But again, solar would produce the majority of electricity with
Re: (Score:2)
Yes we do.
So once the wonder material is saturated they will have to dry it out so it will work again.
Re: (Score:2)
To me it sounds as if it works on a difference in air pressures, so you'll need to do something to cause the air to flow through those pores. Sort of like an osmotic membrane. I suppose it could be an absorb water/dry out cycle, but that itsn't what it sounds like.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that it's not BS, but that there are energy expenditures exogenous to the system. My though was that it probably worked on air pressure, another guy (above) though that it absorbed water (which could be useful if true and reversible). But SOME exogenous factor.
Note that it might turn out to be useful. Lots of energy phenomena can be used in a cyclic manner. But the story as being told is leaving something out.
Re: (Score:2)
My first thought was that it might work based on differentials in the dewpoint - unless the vapour pressure in the device is precisely identical to the vapour pressure outside (which it will only be transitively, the vapour pressure outside is constantly changing), then it will always be at least theoretically possible to extract work from the system by either evaporation or condensation.
But that's just speculation. Terrible article, such that nobody can tell what on Earth they're talking about.
Re:Wonderful news! (Score:4, Informative)
The orignal paper is available free:
https://krichlab.physics.uotta... [uottawa.ca]
It does seem to operate continuously. They monitored one for a couple months. Their proposed mechanism is that the nanopores are a very good mechanism for collecting charge from humid air in contact with the film (a phenomenon that has been observed before). Presumably you need some air circulation to keep delivering charge; they mention the large reservoir provided by the ambient environment, and the current drops when they cover the surface with parafilm. It doesn't seem to require forced air though.
Re: (Score:2)
A gradient in air pressure *IS* forced air. Sometimes you can arrange the external environment to supply it. In that case the question would be "Is it more efficient than a windmill?". There are probably special cases where it's a better choice, but just how large a niche are we talking about? Membranes always imply frictional losses, and if you're going to extract work during the process, the losses are bound to be higher. When they say "nanopore" I here "high frictional barrier to movement". Sometim
Re: (Score:2)
In the real world, most of us understand "forced air" as "you have to apply force." Their setup is in a lab with ambient conditions, no fans. The energy isn't coming from the movement of the air.
Not gonna pay... (Score:3)
Guessing from the abstract: In a nutshell: water in gaseous form has more energy than water in liquid form. Water molecules can be absorbed into the material, effectively releasing some energy that can be harvested.
No info on how much humidity is needed or how much energy can be harvested. However, any engineer can put some upper limits on it. Might be good for low power devices in otherwise difficult locations, but you aren't going to be powering cities this way.
Re: (Score:2)
It says right in the summary that they calculated a billion of them could produce a kilowatt. Of course it needs a lot of engineering to actually make something with a billion of them in a fridge sized unit, but it's worth at least investigating if mass production is possible.
My main concern would be that if everyone has one how much does it affect the humidity of the local atmosphere? Or if someone builds a massive array of them...
Re: (Score:2)
If that would work, there are lots of places plagued by high humidity that would like them. But I don't believe they're telling the whole story. My suspicion is that it requires a difference in air pressure to force air to flow through the membrane, and that the energy required to force that flow would more than equal the energy generated.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how quickly these nano-scale channels will get colonized by bacteria and/or algae or simply clog up with dust an pollen. Will you have to flush it with ethanol or something every few weeks to keep it working?
Re: (Score:2)
Flush it with ethanol: one beer a week.
Re: (Score:2)
Some nanopore membranes have pores that are small enough that bacteria don't colonize them. The same isn't true of dissolved minerals, however., and dust is everywhere. And one thing they all have is the need for something to force the fluid through the pores. Usually this is done with some sort of pump, but I guess you could let gravity supply the gradient, or in this case wind pressure. But such alternatives are pretty inefficient, which really slows down the flow.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's an extremely good point. Thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
https://krichlab.physics.uotta... [uottawa.ca]
Re: (Score:2)
Or, more likely, the water is simply the charge carrier and is not absorbed but used as an air born micro battery.
Re: (Score:1)
However much humidity is needed, we can spare it up here in the Midwest. It's pretty normal up here to have three or four dehumidifiers in a single home, all running continuously at least nine months out of the year.
I have questions:
1. Can the device, over the course of its expected lifespan, produce more power than was expended building it?
2. Does it take the humididty that it uses out of the air, or is it merely a catalyst? Because taking the humidity out of th
Cost? (Score:2)
1 billion of these could make a KW.
So if they cost a tenth of a cent each, thats a million bucks per KW...
Re: (Score:2)
"The device consists of a thin (roughly 7-m) film of protein nanowires deposited on a gold electrode (with an area of around 25 mm2) patterned on glass"...
0.1c? Mebbe not.
Nothing is free (Score:4, Insightful)
This seems suspicious. I can't see how a device just sitting passively in air can generate electricity forever. Unless you can get the air flowing, it will eventually reach equilibrium and stop. And getting air to flow requres (surprise!) energy.
I guess wind could sustain air flow, but then you've just invented a really inefficient from of wind power.
Re: Nothing is free (Score:4, Interesting)
Air is never really that still in the places we inhabit. Thatâ(TM)s why cat hair ends up in corners and there isnâ(TM)t an even layer of dust on your kitchen counter. Especially true outside. The question is absolutely about how much movement we need, but unless you live somewhere with no temperature or humidity gradients at all, I donâ(TM)t think it will be an issue.
And for once it sounds like the more volatile the air conditions the better. Though this would probably be pretty useless outside in very cold climates.
Re: (Score:3)
You can't get more energy out than you put in. So a gentle breeze can give you at most as much energy as a gentle breeze... which is not much.
Re: (Score:2)
The energy is not coming from the breeze, it's coming from a charge that's already on the water droplets. Air does need to pass through it, but the force of the air is not the energy source.
That said, I'm not clear how that works, but it's clear it's not taking energy from the wind; it's taking it from the electrons that have been accumulated on the water.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't get something for nothing. The breeze has to have sufficient force to overcome the repulsive electrostatic force. Whatever you do, you cannot get more energy out than you put in.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but again, it's not the breeze. The SUN is putting energy into the water in the atmosphere. It is also, ultimately, powering the breeze. And it's not just the breeze, temperature and humidity gradients will force the air to move.
I don't remember enough of my meteorology degree to prove this, but in an open environment, it's going to take MORE energy to keep air still than to have it flow. You could build a sealed box, sure, but that's not what we're talking about.
There are TONNES of energy inputs here,
Re: (Score:2)
The real question is "can it generate more power than the fan and possibly water atomizer needed to keep it running constantly?"
And what happen when (Score:2)
air pollution clogs the pores?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
In this universe, we obey the laws of thermodynamics...
If you ever find yourself thinking, "Can I extract energy from this closed system without decreasing the amount of energy in this closed system"... the answer is an absolute, "NO".
You can get a fluid to flow in a constant loop with a heat source and a radiator (which is not a closed system). In this case, you're extracting humidity to (somehow) generate energy. That would indicate that you're going to need freshly humid air to replace the air you're
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you should learn what the term "closed system" means.
Hint: we are not talking about a closed system.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
How much energy does such convective air flow provide? Answer is not much. And you can't get more energy out than you put in. Otherwise, we'd just install tiny little wind turbines to intercept the convective flow and $profit....
Re: (Score:2)
It's *not* the pressure of the air flow that's providing the energy, it's reportedly the electric charge on the moisture droplets.
Re: (Score:2)
That's basically BS. There's no energy per se in electric charge. You only get energy from moving or interacting charges and you can't get more out than you put in.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
...and neither is this (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't see how a device just sitting passively in air can generate electricity forever.
You mean like solar panels? Passive devices can generate energy if they can extract it from their environment. Solar panels use light, it's not clear from the description quite what this device uses - either the motion of humid air or the latent heat of evaporation. If it uses the motion then I suspect it will not scale well since there are no significant air currents in a house. If it extracts the latent heat energy by causing the water to condense then it may well scale since this is 2,256 kJ/kg water so a 1kW device would only need to extract about two litres of water per hour and would work well in humid areas where solar panels are less efficient due to more cloud cover.
Re: (Score:2)
Solar panels exploit a quite incredible degree of inequilibrium and can run passively continuously in the sense that there is no worry about the system making much headway toward equilibrium any time soon.
But you can't have a thermodynamic process that proceeds spontaneously in both directions, and the problem is (with a system where the pieces aren't starting that far off from equilibrium) if we are relying on e.g. some chemical affinity to condense the water and collect its heat of condensation, that same
Re: (Score:2)
...that same affinity is just going to keep holding the condensed water indefinitely until some external input drives it off.
Like gravity - although I agree that sounds unlikely given the size of the holes. Looking at the description I'm starting to think that this may just be a very scaled-down version of Lord Kelvin's thunderstorm though in which case it will not work at scale since the polarity of each cell will be random and the energy comes from air movement.
Re: (Score:2)
"Extracting water" from air is called dehumidifying. That requires energy... it doesn't provide it. Otherwise dehumidifiers would be known as perpetual motion machines.
Your solar panel analogy is wrong because solar panels are not passively extracting energy from air that's in equilibrium... they are simply converting some of the enormous amount of solar energy that hits the earth into electricity. There's an enormous fusion reaction that's been running for billions of years, and that's what's required f
Re: (Score:2)
If a stack of these can produce a kilowatt, as the summary suggests, then there's more than enough energy to run a fan.
Lots of energy sources need power to start up. Anything that uses a dynamo, i.e. everything from small petrol generators to nuclear power plants, needs excitation current to begin producing electricity and become self sustaining. It's one of the reasons why bringing the grid back up after an outage is difficult - power plants that were either not affected or which can start by themselves ar
Billions and billions (Score:3)
Yao estimated that roughly 1 billion Air-gens, stacked to be roughly the size of a refrigerator, could produce a kilowatt and partly power a home in ideal conditions.
Good luck manufacturing, stacking, and interconnecting a billion separate components for a reasonable price.
(...especially in a world where 1 square meter of cheap solar panel can do the same thing).
Re: (Score:2)
> Good luck manufacturing, stacking, and interconnecting a billion separate components for a reasonable price.
I just checked memory prices. I can get 4GB of ram for 15 quid, and that is about 20 billion things that are interconnected.
Re: (Score:2)
I just checked memory prices. I can get 4GB of ram for 15 quid, and that is about 20 billion things that are interconnected.
Your mom's fat cells are all interconnected, and there's trillions of those.
They don't generate much electricity though.
Re: (Score:2)
If mom didn't generate electricity in dad, she wouldn't be a mom...
Re: (Score:2)
Your mom's fat cells are all interconnected, and there's trillions of those.
Yeah, and she doesn't cost $15 bucks.
Re: (Score:2)
...especially in a world where 1 square meter of cheap solar panel can do the same thing
Not at night which, coincidentally, is when humidity is generally highest.
Re:Billions and billions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
it's funny to point out that it's not necessarily impossible
Who said anything about "impossible"?
Re: (Score:2)
It's a film. It's very similar to that solar panel you menion except that in place of purified silicon it uses fibrous organic material.
Interesting but few details (Score:2)
I have a lot of questions but the paper is behind a paywall.
How much of this material the "size of a fingernail and thinner than a single hair" have they been able to make? There are loads of articles about awesome batteries and power sources that exist solely as a lab experiment the size of a quarter. Their "one prototype only produces a small amount of energy — almost enough to power a dot of light on a big screen".
A billion of them "roughly the size of a refrigerator, could produce a kilowatt". I'm
silver bullets (Score:4, Funny)
It's just amazing how many silver bullets are all over the place. How has the price of silver stayed so high with all these silver bullets just waiting to be harvested? The Lord has truly blessed us with an infinite supply of silver bullets to keep us fully nourished. No, wait, to keep idiot journalists fully nourished.
Re: (Score:2)
The Lord has truly blessed us with an infinite supply of silver bullets to keep us fully nourished. No, wait, to keep idiot journalists fully nourished
I would say that we keep finding new "silver bullets" so that we can justify doing nothing about climate change that would impact our way of life. Just look at the patting on the back about renewables in 2022, when 2022 was a year where an all-time high of fossil fuels were burned. Or how Germany is happy to spend 500 billions deploying renewables, while at the same time closing down nuclear plants (instead of doing both).
This is collective stupidity at its paroxysm.
I have one on my desk (Score:2)
I chose as 'any material' a potato.
Re: (Score:2)
Now just slice it super thin and add nanopores. Unfortunately, they did not offer specifications in Metric units, you'll have to make sure the slices are "the size of a fingernail, thinner than a single hair, and dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores".
Cautionary tale (Score:2)
When first developed, Gore-Tex was simply a filter with pores, of a size that allowed water vapor to cross, but not liquid water. However, soon the filter clogged, because water vapor had impurities in it, specially lipids that clung to the micropores and obstructed them. They had to add a second layer of what was essentially an sponge to filter the lipids. At it was intended for garments, body movement would pump the water in the sponge and expel it when you are wearing it. I don't know how they would plan
Re: (Score:2)
I live not too far from the ocean, and not too far from farming, and not too far from a major freeway. The air around my house is full of dust, salt, and traffic pollution. We get a near constant onshore breeze, air pollutants do not tend to build up but are always there is some amount. The humidity there for sure but I don't see how this kind of device would last.
Human hair units? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It depends on the size of a Library of Congress.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah sure (Score:2)
Might be useful but not for large scale power (Score:3)
Separately, since the article is paywalled, its not clear how it works. If it is removing water from air, where does that water go? Unless it is saturating some material (implying this is just a battery with limited life) it must end up as liquid. Since air us usually 100% RH, its not clear how that releases net energy
Devil in the details: Fuel vs. harvesting. (Score:2)
These kinds of "discoveries" happen pretty much on a weekly basis.
Link to old article (Score:2)
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi... [sci-hub.se]
Humidity is not a physical substance (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Any "scientist" who refers to "humidity" as if it is something that exists
So, humidity is a nonphysical phenomenon?
Re: (Score:2)
ElimGarak must think humidity is supernatural.
Re-discovery? (Score:2)
And now... (Score:2)
Stacking a billion layers into a refrigerator, (Score:1)
Say it's 1.5 metres tall, so you need to manufacture 1000 layers into 1.5mm. 1.5 micron layers, and a billion of them, all competing with each other for the same ambient humidity source. And then even if it works, the theoretical best case is it generates a measely kiloWatt
Fuck off Yao and Xiaomeng Liu, you might have the sense not to enter the healthcare market and rip off billionaries unlike Elizabeth Holmes, but you're both just as full of shit as she is!
Ever present? (Score:2)
would offer continuous clean electricity since it uses the energy from humidity, which is always present, rather than depending on the sun or wind
Really?... I mean REALLY? Did someone forget to tell these people about a thing called temperature, in particular freezing and below zero, at which point all "humidity" is stripped from the air as the water vapor freezes into ice crystals? I think someone forgot to tell them about that part.
Don't get me wrong, this is a great step forward if it does indeed work, and possibly helps directly combat the effects of global warming by using both the higher temperatures of global warming that also produce higher
Non-viable solutions are easier to find :) (Score:1)
This is almost certainly another case of 'invention with no practical use'.
Just think of all the "breakthrough in battery technology" news headlines you've seen. 100x faster charging! 1000x times the capacity!!!
They are likely mostly true. But they were never viable as each 'breakthrough' was likely hampered by some gigantic downside not mentioned in the news. 100x faster charging -- but at the cost of a battery life of 3 charge cycles. 1000x the capacity -- but self-discharging within a few minutes. And
And they invented... (Score:2)