A groundbreaking discovery by a team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) has revealed that nanopores smaller than 100 nanometers in diameter can extract continuous electrical current from the humidity in the air. The discovery, published in the journal Advanced Materials, could open up new possibilities for sustainable energy production. The researchers found that the “generic Air-gen effect” allows almost any material to continuously extract electricity from the air when equipped with protein nanowires. Xiaomeng Liu, one of the researchers, said that the discovery is “extraordinarily exciting” and opens up a wide range of possibilities for generating clean electrical energy.
The air contains a high amount of electricity that can trigger lightning strikes, but this charge has not been harnessed by humans until now. The “generic Air-gen effect” makes it possible to extract continuous electricity from the air by using a specialized material made of protein nanowires grown from the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens. The material must have pores smaller than 100 nanometers in diameter, which is less than one-thousandth the width of a human hair. The researchers concluded that they could design a power harvester based on this number, consisting of a thin layer of material filled with nanopores that allow water molecules to pass from the top to the bottom of the material.
The upper part of the layer would be bombarded with more charge-carrying water molecules than the lower part, creating an imbalance of charge similar to that in a cloud. This would essentially create a battery that runs as long as there is moisture in the air. The power harvester would work around the clock, in any weather, and regardless of wind conditions, solving one of the major problems of technologies such as wind or solar energy that only work under certain conditions. The Air-gen device could stack thousands of them on top of each other to increase energy production efficiently without increasing the device’s footprint. This could potentially provide kilowatts of electricity for general use.
The discovery of the “generic Air-gen effect” could revolutionize the way we generate clean energy. The researchers believe that this technology could be used to create power harvesters for different regions, such as rainforest areas or drier regions. The possibilities are endless, and the future could see clean electricity available everywhere we go.
