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According to studies, half the sun’s energy that lands on Planet Earth is used to evaporate water. Australian start-up Strategic Elements is working with the University of New South Wales and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization to lasso some of that energy and put it back to work.
The researchers have crafted a battery design that charges itself by pulling moisture from the air.
The company is secretive about its device’s architecture, but a recent scientific paper by the team’s leader gives some pretty definite clues.
The paper suggests that in the group’s prototype of the device, a pair of electrodes made of glass coated with a silver paste are attached to a water-attracting layer of graphene oxide. (Graphene is a one-atom thick sheet of carbon atoms).
When the graphene draws in water molecules from the air, it creates positively charged ions that then flow across the cell, creating a charge at the far electrode.
As the graphene dries out, the protons migrate back to where they came from, ready to create a new charge the next time the layer is humidified.
The technique can be engineered to be continuous, with the protons looping back and forth to produce an uninterrupted supply of power.
The research team has recently boosted the strength of the device’s current from the milliampere to the ampere range, powerful enough to be useful in practical applications.
The developers are ready to commercialize their “electronic ink” for practical applications but also are eager to “test the upper limits” of their invention.
TRENDPOST: The Australian invention is powerful enough to run most devices that now make up the $10-billion annual market in wearable electronics and skin patches.
However, the breakthrough suggests that larger batteries, especially in humid climates, could use the same architecture.