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It seems that not a week goes by without someone coming up with a ‘new’ form of renewable energy, and now another study claims that humidity itself is a source of power. Listening to their science, it seems they might be on to something.

According to the study published, humidity could be a source of clean, pollution-free energy, and with a device the size of a fridge, you could power your entire home without doing anything.

Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and the paper’s lead author, says that “air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that, unlike solar and wind, is continuously available.” In fact, the researchers say that nearly any material can be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air.

“Think of a cloud, which is nothing more than a mass of water droplets. Each of those droplets contains a charge, and when conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt – but we don’t know how to reliably capture electricity from lightning.”

What these clever okes have done is build a small-scale cloud that produces electricity predictably and continuously for harvesting. Using an ‘air-powered generator’, electricity is pulled from humidity by material that came from bacteria, using a device the size of a fingernail that is dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores.

The tiny holes allow the water in the air to pass through in a way that would create a charge imbalance in the upper and lower parts of the device, effectively creating a battery that runs continuously.

You’ll need a lot of them though. The researchers believe that roughly 1 billion air generators stacked on top of each other can produce the equivalent of 1 kilowatt of energy, which is twice the generation capacity of Eskom at present and would be sufficient to power a modest home.

The implications of this study are far-reaching, and if effective, the process can be incorporated into building materials, and even paint. Imagine your walls becoming the source of power for your home.

“The entire earth is covered with a thick layer of humidity,” Yao said. “It’s an enormous source of clean energy. This is just the beginning in making use of that.”

The research was published in a paper in Advanced Materials, and builds on previous work that suggests we have more than enough power floating around in the air to save us from fossil fuels.

South Africa’s woes with electricity are a pain in the ass, but the up-side is that more research is being conducted into alternatives to Gwede’s Karpowerships. Nobody can claim ownership of humidity, even if you are full of hot air.

[source:washingtonpost]