A Star Trek-style device that harvests clean energy out of thin air has been created and could revolutionize green energy.
The recycling machine, named Air-gen, makes electricity from humidity thanks to tiny pores – less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair.
It resembles the replicator in the cult TV show that changes air into any kind of matter – including food or water.
Now scientists are turning science fiction into fact – opening the door to cheap green power for cars, trains and airplanes.
Senior author Dr. Jun Yao, of Massachusetts University, said: “The air contains an enormous amount of electricity. 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 we’ve done is to create a human-built, small-scale cloud that produces electricity for us predictably and continuously so that we can harvest it.”
The technique can be scaled up for mass use across the world – in environments ranging from the Amazon rainforest to the Sahara.
Dr Yao said: “Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go.
“The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”
The heart of the man-made cloud depends on a phenomenon dubbed the ‘generic Air-gen effect.’
Three years ago the same team showed electricity could be continuously harvested from the air using a specialized material made of protein nanowires grown from the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens.
Graduate student Xiaomeng Liu, lead author of the latest study, said: “This is very exciting. We are opening up a wide door for harvesting clean electricity from thin air.”
The breakthrough could help save the planet –…
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