There was a fascinating article in The Guardian last weekend that deserves more attention and which could open up a revolutionary new way of reimagining Nikola Tesla's long sought dream of generating electricity out of thin air, except instead of trying to capture lightning at the macro level, this involves using the water molecules of ordinary humid air at the nano level -- and the real kicker is that it was discovered mostly by accident:
In May, a team at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst published a paper declaring they had successfully generated a small but continuous electric current from humidity in the air…
“To be frank, it was an accident,” says the study’s lead author, Prof Jun Yao. “We were actually interested in making a simple sensor for humidity in the air. But for whatever reason, the student who was working on that forgot to plug in the power.”
The UMass Amherst team were surprised to find that the device, which comprised an array of microscopic tubes, or nanowires, was producing an electrical signal regardless…
For their recent study, Yao’s team have moved on from nanowires, and instead are punching materials with millions of tiny holes, or nanopores. The device they have come up with is the size of a thumbnail, one-fifth the width of a human hair, and capable of generating roughly one microwatt – enough to light a single pixel on a large LED screen.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian mother & sons team (Profs Svitlana, Andriy and Sergiy Lyubchyk) with the Lisbon based group catcherproject.eu has been working on improving the basic concept (using zirconium oxide instead of carbon film) and now have a 4cm (1.5in) diameter ultrathin disc capable of putting out a continuous 10 milliamps at 1.5 volts, powered by nothing more than atmospheric humidity.
Theoretically, 20,000 of these disks stacked into a washing machine sized cube could generate 10 kilowatt hours of electricity per day — enough to power the average European household 24/7, regardless of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. And they’re hoping to have a working prototype available by next year! The main question at this point is whether economies of scale will eventually enable this new type of green technology to become price competitive with existing solar or wind power projects.