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One thing that hasn’t been mentioned here is that at a large scale this probably has significant impacts on weather patterns.
Here’s the explanation of the physics they gave:
Each nanowire was less than one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, wide enough that an airborne water molecule could enter, but so narrow it would bump around inside the tube. Each bump, the team realised, lent the material a small charge, and as the frequency of bumps increased, one end of the tube became differently charged from the other.
"So it’s really like a battery,” says Yao. “You have a positive pull and a negative pull, and when you connect them the charge is going to flow.”
Wow. Presumably coastal northern communities could be big beneficiaries of this in the future. Lets hope it’s not literal vapourware
American southeast could single handedly power the country
except for the pollen. Nanopores / tiny holes seem like they’d get fouled up by dust and things pretty quickly.
really interesting idea, just wonder about the real world operating environment issues.
The device they have come up with is the size of a thumbnail, one-fifth the width of a human hair, and capable of generating roughly one microwatt – enough to light a single pixel on a large LED screen.
So probably only going to be usable for low power devices for a while
Depends on if it can scale and how far apart each has to be from another. A single windmill is not as impressive but you get a field of them you generate much more, hopefully it can get closer to a solar panel and be spread along a large are.
Imagine dead space being utalized as a supliment.
The size almost seems like a feature. If it’s durable at all, you make a scale-maile coat that dehumidifies the sweat off of you and provides power for some sensors or something? The article mentions a washing machine size box that would power your whole house (but I’ll bet getting humidity to the middle would be a challenge for that form factor.
Imagine these being built into existing air conditioning units. In the right area they could reasonably power themselves.
