Scientists have invented a device that can continuously generate electricity from thin air, offering a glimpse of a possible sustainable energy source that can be made of almost any material and runs on the ambient humidity that surrounds all of us, reports a new study.
The novel “air generator,” or Air-gen, is made from materials with holes that are under 100 nanometers in length, which is a scale thousand times smaller than a human hair. This design can pull electricity from water droplets in the air for much longer periods than previous concepts, the researchers report, suggesting that it could eventually provide a continuous and sustainable source of power. Researchers hope the technique could eventually help to fight climate change by serving as an alternative to fossil fuels.
If you’ve ever seen a bolt of lightning streak across the sky, you’ve already had a sneak peek of the untapped power that is hidden in ambient air. This energy is fueled by the electrical charges of water droplets in the air, a phenomenon that has inspired many attempts to harvest humidity by inducing imbalances in charged waters with special devices. Many of these techniques only work for short periods, or require expensive materials, which presents practical challenges for efficiency and scalability.
Now, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have developed an Air-gen device that yields electricity from contact with water droplets that pass through its porous material. In this way, the Air-gen technology creates “a spontaneous and sustained charging gradient for continuous electric output” that “opens a wide door for the broad exploration of sustainable electricity from ambient air,” according to a study published on Wednesday in Advanced Materials.
“One day we may get clean electricity literally anywhere, anytime by using Air-gen technology (i.e., the concept of ‘ubiquitous powering’), because air humidity is 24/7 continuous and everywhere,” Jun Yao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UMass Amherst and senior author of the study, said in an email to Motherboard.
“The basis for broad-scale power is that the air contains a huge amount of electricity,” he added. “So if we make Air-gen bigger, we can get larger-volume power—that volume can certainly extend to usage for daily-life functions.”
Yao and his colleagues initially stumbled upon the potential of the Air-gen effect a few years ago during an experiment with biologically synthesized nanowires. After successfully producing electricity from the tiny wires, the team began to explore the possibility of repeating the same technique with a host of other materials.
“The initial discovery was made back in 2020 and was really a serendipitous one—we found that Air-gen made from a specific material called protein nanowires synthesized by a type of bacterium called Geobacter can continuously produce electricity from air humidity,” Yao said.
“But that time, we considered the effect exclusive to this specific material (although we had some initial intuition/indication that the effect may expand to other materials as well),” he continued. “The current work is based on our initial intuition, which then leads to the discovery of this ‘generic’ Air-gen effect working with literally all kinds of materials. So it turns an initially narrow window to a wide-open door for broad potential/impact.”
Indeed, the results revealed that practically any material could become an Air-gen device provided it was perforated with tiny holes measuring 100 nanometers or fewer. At this scale, the holes are big enough to allow water to pass through an upper chamber into a lower chamber, but are small enough that the droplets make contact with the material as they move down through the holes. As a consequence, a charge imbalance is created in the device because the water droplets increase the charge of the upper layer by soaking it as they move into the lower chamber.
The microscale device was able to produce continuous energy equivalent to several hundred millivolts for a test period of a week, which is much longer than other air generator concepts that had a one-time power output that lasted no more than 48 hours. Its material versatility opens up the possibility of scaling the idea up to meet commercial or industrial energy demands.
“A general understanding is that the energy density is low (which can be intuitively understood that the air is very thin), so a single-layer of Air-gen has no way to compete with other power sources (e.g., solar, wind) for matched power volume,” Yao explained. “However, the beauty is that air is diffusive and filled in the entire vertical space, which means that we can stack many layers of air-gen devices in the vertical space to improve power (without taking up additional space footprint).”
“So in principle, Air-gen can be more space efficient” than other power sources, he continued. “Moreover, they can be engineered into varied form factors and neatly blend into the environment (even without one’s notice)” versus the example of “a solar panel that exclusively takes up space.”
It’s wild to imagine a future where homes, factories, and perhaps whole cities might be powered by the electricity that is concealed in the air. For now, the Air-gen concept remains in a developmental phase, though Yao and his colleagues are already working to scale up the concept and optimize the structure of their materials to boost energy efficiency.
“Importantly, since air humidity is ubiquitous and continuous 24/7, Air-gen can be deployed almost anywhere for continuous energy harvesting, transcending the inherent intermittence of existing harvesters restricted to time or location,” the researchers said in the study.
“The sustainable Air-gen technology holds promising prospects” that make it “a possible ‘greener’ energy technology for the future,” they concluded.
this is news? we've had electricity from the air for centuries, it's called a windmill
That's where it seems promising though. It's not the material, it's the size of the holes in it. Make small enough holes and the same effect happens generically.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/841696
The ability to form holes in membranes with diameters of only a few nanometers (1 to 10 nm) is of interest in many fields of nanometer scale science including single molecule studies, ion proximity lithography, and single atom doping [1-5]. Electron beam lithography followed by dry etching has been used to form holes with diameters in the range of tens of nanometers, but resist resolution and etching of high aspect ratio holes in membranes make formation of holes with diameters below 5 nm very challenging [6]. Direct hole drilling can be achieved with focused ion beams, but available beam diameters are about 10 nm, limiting achievable hole sizes. Holes can also be drilled directly with electron beams, and hole diameters as small as 1 to 2 nm have been reported in 100 nm thick sheets of Al2O3 [7].
Formation of synthetic nanometer scale holes with diameters below 10 nm has further been reported by several groups who used swift heavy ion track etching [3], or ion beam sculpting with keV argon ions [1, 8]. In this letter, we describe a simple method for nano-hole formation based on monitored closing of 100 nm scale holes by electron beam deposition of thin films.
Making smaller holes than 100nm was already doable at an industrial scale in 2003.
I can believe this would eventually be used for small, low power devices like watches or smoke detectors or something. Which would be neat, but then out of nowhere the article concludes with
It’s wild to imagine a future where homes, factories, and perhaps whole cities might be powered by the electricity that is concealed in the air.
Yeah, that sure is wild to imagine, have fun with that.
Motherfuckers will literally try to invent the vanometric power cell before stopping oil
this is, quite literally, the pivotal plot device of goddamned atlas shrugged, which makes me think it's not real.
also, telling that ayn rand's capitalist utopia relied on magical quasifree energy (that her titular character collects rents on presumably)
Moreover, they can be engineered into varied form factors and neatly blend into the environment (even without one’s notice)” versus the example of “a solar panel that exclusively takes up space.”
Fuck yeah more 5G trees inbound
I wonder what ideal operating ranges look like, whether more humidity = more better, would it benefit/impede hydroelectric etc
The relative humidity range is something I wish they went into. Here in the high desert it's 20-30% unless we get a rare storm. There are so many wind and solar farms around here with the vertical space to integrate a system like this, if only as an off-peak generator, but I don't know how much water that actually translates to in comparison to the 80% relative humidity in a place like the tropics.
My experience of static shocks is they're most frequent in dry conditions, maybe it's similar and too much moisture drowns the system idk?
They don't even indicate one way or the other lol
This design can pull electricity from water droplets in the air
how will i -electrify- the laydies :screm-cool: when they take all the goddang electricity outta the air! :kitty-cri-texas:
“The initial discovery was made back in 2020 and was really a serendipitous one—we found that Air-gen made from a specific material called protein nanowires synthesized by a type of bacterium called Geobacter can continuously produce electricity from air humidity,” Yao said.
Is the important part, besides that little is new and most is sensationalized. How much power they can generate, for what amount of cost in what time spans is relevant. There is no reason to believe that it will be relevant for meso or macro scales.
The supplementary material indicates that they can generate a max voltage of about 300 mV and max current of about 100 nanoamps from a 5x5mm film.
Is that any good? Don't know, only had freshman physics :blob-no-thoughts:
Power, Watts, is Volts x Amps.
300 mV x 100 nA = 0.3 V x 0.0000001 A = 0.00000003 W from a 5x5 mm film, or around 0.0000000012 W (1.2 nW) per square mm, unless I fucked something up.
The time-averaged wattage a house draws in America is like 1200 W according to google. Divide that by 0.0000000012 W per square mm and you get around a trillion square mm or around a million square meters of film to power a house.
I have no idea how much volume that is. The film must be pretty thin if 5x5 mm can still be called a film, but the need for air circulation probably limits how densely you can fold or stack the film and still draw full power. Maybe the generator would resemble an air conditioning unit with a condenser coil, but I had a hard time googling the typical surface area of an AC unit condenser coil so idk.
Just pulling a number out of my ass, if we say 1 square mm adds 1 cubic mm of volume then a trillion square mm will take up 1000 cubic meters, so you might need a 10x10x10 cube to power your house. At that density, a power plant the size of the Burj Khalifa could power around 1600 homes.
Interesting, thanks for doing the math!
I'm thinking this means that even if you get efficiency gains on the extraction side it's going to be hard to scale because that is a lot of surface area that you'd presumably need to circulate air through in order to keep power generation going.
you could probably build it so the air circulates on its own. Like if it generates or absorbs any heat you could just make it a big tower with openings at the bottom and top, then rising or falling heat drives circulation. Idk what it's doing with the moisture in the air but I know cloud formation heats up the air, which is how you get thunderstorms.
