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The sounds game-changing if it can be scaled up.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-a-way...

Scientists Find a Way to Harvest Clean Energy From Nothing But Air

Engineers have demonstrated something marvelous. Almost any material can be used to create a device that continuously harvests energy from humid air.

It's not a development that's ready for practical application, but it does, its creators say, transcend some of the limitations of other harvesters. All the material needs is to be pocked with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter. That's around a thousandth of the width of a human hair, so easier said than done but far simpler than expected.

Such material can harvest the electricity generated by microscopic water droplets in humid air, according to a team led by engineer Xiaomeng Liu of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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... more at link

BHM:
Thanks for posting. Without further detail it seems like a Maxwell's demon. The problem is that you need to have the droplets flow into "the top" (whatever that means) but not flow into the bottom. Simply hanging a film in the air should result in no net charge as the charged droplets would flow into both sides of the film. Are they using a vacuum pump to suck the droplets into the top? What is powering that pump? Also, it isn't clear how the droplets are becoming charged in the first place. A cloud in the wild has UV radiation impinging on it, creating charged droplets. But over time those free electrons find those charged droplets and they become neutralized. Certainly rain drops don't spark when they land so not all droplets are charged. So somehow they need to hang these films inside clouds (using an aerostat?) and run a pump to suck molecules through the film. Not saying it can't be done but these "engineering details" can make or break a technology. Fun to think about. Will be fascinating to see how far they go with it.

Rgds,
HH/Sean

Without further detail it seems like a Maxwell's demon.
Even better! Let's say you place one of these films on a tea kettle spout and use the electricity generated to heat the tea kettle. Voila - a perpetual motion machine.

Rgds,
HH/Sean ;-)

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