The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Clean electricity from the air: Groundbreaking discovery in renewable energy

2023-06-05T07:32:46.066Z

Highlights: A research team at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has made a breakthrough. Any material can produce electricity from the air under certain conditions. "The idea is simple, but it has never been discovered before," says co-author Jun Yao. The device could run around the clock, regardless of weather conditions, time of day or night, as well as the availability of sun or wind. A cellulose film that the team tested reaches a voltage of 260 millivolts – a smartphone or tablet usually requires 5 volts.



"The idea has never been discovered before": A research team from the USA has made a breakthrough: any material can produce electricity from the air under certain conditions. © MiS / IMAGO

A research team from the USA has made a breakthrough: any material can produce electricity from the air under certain conditions.

Amherst – In times of climate change, the topic of renewable energies is increasingly coming into focus. However, electricity production from solar energy or wind power has a disadvantage: energy production is highly dependent on sunshine or wind conditions. But now a research team at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has presented a possibility that could revolutionize electricity production.

Xiaomeng Liu's team has discovered the so-called "generic air-gen effect". "The air contains an enormous amount of electricity," explains co-author Jun Yao. "Think of a cloud that is nothing more than a set of water droplets. Each of these drops has a charge and if the conditions are right, the cloud can generate a lightning strike," the researcher continues. "We don't know how to reliably capture energy from lightning. However, we have developed a small cloud that produces energy in a predictable and continuous way so that we can harvest it," Yao explains in a statement from his university.

Groundbreaking discovery in renewable energy: Researchers generate clean electricity from the air

A few years ago, the researchers developed a device that could be used to extract energy from the air. They used protein nanowires produced by a bacterium called Geobacter sulfurreducens. In their current research, however, they found that the bacterium is not necessary at all. According to the researchers, the ability to generate electricity from the air is much more universal: any material can enable this energy production as long as it has a certain property.

The property: "It must have holes smaller than 100 nanometers, i.e. less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair," explains Yao. Background is a parameter called "mean free path length". It is the distance that a single molecule of water travels in the air before colliding with another single molecule of the same substance. In the case of water molecules in the air, this is about 100 nanometers.

Thin layer of material can charge water molecules and thus produce electricity

Based on this finding, the research team developed a thin layer of material with nanopores smaller than 100 nanometers. This layer allows the passage of water molecules from top to bottom, but they easily bump into the edge of the pores. This creates a charge imbalance, similar to a cloud, where the upper part of the layer has a higher charge compared to the lower part. This charge can potentially be used to power small devices or store the power in a battery.

"The idea is simple, but it has never been discovered before and opens up a wide range of possibilities," says Yao. The electric harvester could be made of a wide variety of materials. "You could imagine harvesters made of one material for rainforest environments and another for drier regions," says the researcher. Thanks to the moisture present in the air, the device could run around the clock, regardless of weather conditions, time of day or night, as well as the availability of sun or wind.

Discovery at a very early stage

Although the research team's discovery is still in its early stages, there are promising results. As reported by the portal ScienceAlert, the study, which was published in the journal Advanced Materials, shows that a cellulose film that the team tested reaches a voltage of 260 millivolts – a smartphone or tablet usually requires a voltage of 5 volts. However, the team believes that stacking several thousand layers can increase the amount of energy without increasing the footprint of the device.

0

Also Read

Surprising signal from the alien planet – "Clear indication that we may have something here"

READ

Nasa rover makes unexpected find on Mars

READ

Surprising turnaround in space exploration: Supposed "star trail" is something completely different

READ

Uranus is "not just a simple blue ball of gas" – Surprising find at the North Pole

READ

These things were discovered on Mars – they don't belong there

READ

Fancy a voyage of discovery?

My Area

"Imagine a future world where clean electricity is available everywhere," says Yao. "The generic air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality." Study leader Liu adds: "We are opening a door for the production of clean electricity from the air".

This article, written by the editors, used machine support. The article was carefully reviewed by editor Tanja Banner before publication.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-06-05

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.