Electricity from thin air?

Sounds pretty cool, but the scale up to useful quantities of electricity is unknown, the cost and maintenance required could render this process useless....might find a niche market anyway...so it does sound interesting...one thing to remember is that air is dirty...

There is an electric field in the atmosphere of about 100 volt/m. It can be measured only with a high impedance voltmeter.

The source impedance is very high, so there is not enough current available for any useful purpose, but it could be captured and stored in a well insulated capacitor, I believe.

"Thunderstorms act as a giant battery in the atmosphere, charging up the electrosphere to about 400,000 volts with respect to the surface.^[3] This sets up an electric field throughout the atmosphere, which decreases with increase in altitude. Atmospheric ions created by cosmic rays and natural radioactivity move in the electric field, so a very small current flows through the atmosphere, even away from thunderstorms. Near the surface of the Earth, the magnitude of the field is on average around 100 V/m.^[4]"

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_electricity}

Here is a similar report.

Initial testing results showed a very small amount of power available...

"In initial testing, the amount of power produced was vanishingly small — just 15 picowatts, or trillionths of a watt, per square centimeter of metal plate. But Miljkovic says the process could easily be tuned to achieve at least 1 microwatt, or millionth of a watt, per square centimeter. Such output would be comparable to that of other systems that have been proposed for harvesting waste heat, vibrations, or other sources of ambient energy, and represents an amount that could be sufficient to provide useful power for electronic devices in some remote locations."

https://news.mit.edu/2014/getting-charge-out-water-droplets-0714

It would seem that scaling up would require not only much more collector area but also more moist air.

The link I posted is a different concept and process.

They claim that a lot of energy could be produced by stacking the plates together.

"Finally, because air humidity diffuses in three-dimensional space and the thickness of the Air-gen device is only a fraction of the width of a human hair, many thousands of them can be stacked on top of each other, efficiently scaling up the amount of energy without increasing the footprint of the device. Such an Air-gen device would be capable of delivering kilowatt-level power for general electrical utility usage."

I personally would like to see a real life demo of a 1kw stack.

I personally would like to see a real life demo of a 1kw stack.

Yeah, me too, but I doubt either one of us will. Energy has to come from somewhere!

We are immersed in energy,like a fish in water.

Every object radiates electromagnetic energy in different frequencies.

It is the differential in energy levels that produce useful work,so finding a differential is the key.No energy lost or created, no free lunch.

The only possible source of the energy is the latent heat of condensation of the moisture in the air.The sun and wind evaporates the water,putting energy in,and their process takes that energy out.

But then again,I don't know what their process really is.

I can see how it would be possible to get a little energy if the humidity changes and the system returns to equilibrium. There are clocks that run just on the changes in barometric pressure and temperature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock

Since there is no such thing as perpetual motion, they must be putting energy into the device. We need more details. Will have to say "bunk" until shown otherwise.

"This harvester would be made from a thin layer of material filled with nanopores smaller than 100 nm that would let water molecules pass from the upper to the lower part of the material. But because each pore is so small, the water molecules would easily bump into the pore's edge as they pass through the thin layer. This means that the upper part of the layer would be bombarded with many more charge-carrying water molecules than the lower part, creating a charge imbalance,"

Can anyone explain what that means?

EDIT: It sounds a bit like a version of Maxwell's demons.

The only possible analogy that I can come up with is getting a static discharge from sliding your feet on carpet,except in a continuous mode.

If the water molecules are moving through the nano pores due to capillary,osmosis,or some other force,and some electrons are stripped because of contact with the pore walls, there has to be a heating(latent heat of condensation/evaporation,around 2,230 joules per gram ) and cooling effect somewhere to balance the equation,and the need to keep one plate cooler than the other or the plates would soon be the same temperature and condensation would not occur.

Even with a very small amount of energy per layer,if they can be stacked to increase power,there will be a heat load to get rid of.

The complete theory of operation is not explained.

There has to be a reason for the water to move through the pores:gravity,osmosis,capillary effect,etc.

You are right there has to be an energy exchange somewhere.

Maybe they intend to make a mini-hurricane as well?That's the way nature does it.

At any rate,it has to make money or it will never get funding.

Tesla was going to make energy free world wide,but when his investors found out it would be free,they stopped funding him.His towers were destroyed and sold for scrap.

Some say that he was going to harness the power of the ionosphere and magnetic field of the Earth,but we will never know.

TANSTAAFL!

In their paper (available at wiley.com) they admit that harvesting charge from water molecules does deplete those molecules of charge, but this "charge consumption (e.g., during current production) will be constantly replenished by the water exchange process. The ambient humidity provides a vast open source that can continuously replenish charges for sustainability".

Sounds like, to me, that some or all of the harvested charge will be dissipated in a fan.

OT? How?

The researchers' paper admits that, as each water molecule donates its charge to the (protein) electrode, it has to be replaced with a non-depleted molecule.

I calculated the power density of their electrodes to be about 1W/200m^2, so layering a cubic meter of electrode material, with the layers 1mm apart, would yield about 5W with good air movement.

This aerodynamically draggy configuration would likely require forcing air (ie, with a fan) between the layers, probably at a cost of more than 5W.

Please check my work. See Supplementary Table 1 at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fadma.202300748&file=adma202300748-sup-0001-SuppMat.pdf

If the layers are oriented vertically then convection would assist in the air flow and heat transfer and drainage. Moist air is lighter than dry air.Admittedly,it would be more effective with forced air flow,but the expense of this might nullify the savings.In places with no electricity, a little help is better than none.A single candle is better than total darkness.With led's, 5 watts can provide a reasonable amount of light in a single room.

A chimney effect could be created by clever shape and stacking of the layers,not necessarily round,perhaps hexagonal shaped, like a honeycomb.

A Volt is a Joule per Coulomb.

An Amp is a Coulomb per Second.

So to get a Watt, which is a Volt times an Amp or a Joule per second, one needs a Coulomb per second for each Volt, and <...thin air...> just doesn't have those Coulombs in abundance.

So it isn't a practical proposition for satisfying mankind's energy greed.

The amount of energy is dependent on the amount of water that it can condense in a given time period.

I gram of water per minute would equal 39.7 watts/minute,which I think is WAY too much for such a device,so the amount of condensation must be very small,unless multiple stacks and large areas are employed.

It would be nice if they stated the amount per minute per square meter per single layer.

The concept of <...watts/minute...> is abstruse; it has the dimensions of mass¹.length².time^-4.

So Kilo Watts/Hour is also abstruse?

The Watt is a unit of power, which is energy/time. It makes no sense here to have something expressed as energy/time².

You are right.I didn't catch that while I was writing it.Should have been Watts.

My bad.

Not only abstruse, but insane. Geez, learn your units.

Actually, lots of Coulombs in <...thin air...> sounds like the beginnings of a lightning bolt.

There are not currently any flux capacitors listed on a well-known internet auction site.

Here are some thoughts:

It appears that there is something happening. I haven't found any reports "debunking" it. I'm sure duplicating the effect has been carried out by multiple researchers, and it's been reported in respectable journals.

The plot below came from the Wiley site. An "eyeball average" of 25 nA over 110 hours comes out to about 0.01 coulombs (red line). The blue plot, Δm/m, where m is the mass of water on the device (see figure 2 in the ref), apparently shows negligible percent change in adsorbed water, but I would rather see Δm than Δm/m. An accumulating Δm would indicate that the effect would not persist and that energy would be required to remove the accumulating water.

Another thing that seems unusual is the large fluctuations. I'm wondering if it was due to the control system that maintained the relative humidity at 50%. It would be interesting to see what these fluctuations correlate to. The effect is so small (0-50 nA) that interference could be likely.

Ref: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fadma.202300748&file=adma202300748-sup-0001-SuppMat.pdf

Just skim-read the paper. Really interesting. It's in a proper peer-reviewed journal and the academics are working under support from the (US) NSF and Sony. They make no commercial claims. The conclusion is pretty much 'this is really interesting and people should look more at it'.

They're using protein nanowires and with great understatement observe, "a potential limitation of scaling up is the cost associated with biological nanowires".

Interesting review of some of the other approaches too. I didn't know about the use of dehydrated materials to absorb air water where the temporary absorption gradient can drive electric output. Stops when saturation is achieved, obvs. Quite an educational lunchtime for me.

Anyway, neat piece of research.

Is that one of those videos on YouTwitFace?

Bunk.