Scientists have dreamed of generating power from thin air for more than a century, and Nikola Tesla was already experimenting along those lines in the 1930s.
Nikola Tesla was an inventor, physicist, electrical engineer, and mechanical engineer, best known for his contributions to the design of the AC mains system.
Recently, calls for a clean energy concept have been mounting. Moving away from fossil fuels in time to avoid the worst of the climate crisis would be the single largest collaborative project the world has ever attempted, and necessity has pushed scientists to dream big.
The issue of collecting energy from the air seems possible, after scientists have come close to turning the impossible into the possible.
In 2021, researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, announced that they have invented a device called Air-gen, which is short for air-powered generator.
The device is able to use a natural protein to convert moisture in the surrounding air to generate electricity. This is done through a film made of protein nanowires sourced from Geobacter sulfurreducens bacteria.
The team of researchers claimed that this technology “could have interesting implications for the future of renewable energy, climate change, and the future of medicine,” as the film, which is a few microns thick, has proven effective.
“We literally make electricity out of thin air,” explained researcher and research author Jun Yao. “Air-gen generates clean energy 24/7. This is the most amazing and exciting application of protein nanowires to date.”
In 2022, the European Union begins funding a new project called CATCHER, which similarly aims to generate power from atmospheric moisture, but in this case through the use of cells made from zirconium oxide, a ceramic material used in all kinds of applications from dental implants to rods. nuclear fuel.
“When exploring the properties of zirconium oxide nanomaterials 7 years ago, researchers began to see evidence of hydropower,” the European Commission’s Horizon magazine reported in December 2022.
“They have come a long way in the past seven years, but the technology is still a long way from scalability and practicality,” he added.
He asserted that at present, “an 8 x 5 cm sheet of its material can generate about 0.9 volts in the laboratory with a humidity of about 50%, or roughly half the output of an AA battery.”
In 2023, scientists at Monash University in Australia made another breakthrough in the field of energy. This time, the main substance is an enzyme called Huc. The enzyme was found in Mycobacterium smegmatis, a cousin of the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis and leprosy.
Huc is truly a powerhouse for converting air into energy, which bacteria use to generate energy in extreme environments with few other energy sources.
Once extracted, the researchers say the enzyme can be used to power “a range of small, portable electrical devices including biometric sensors, environmental monitors, digital clocks, calculators or simple computers.”
So far, the various applications of Huc have been found more in a thought experiment than a tested hypothesis, but the scientists responsible believe that Huc has the potential to produce even better results.
Rhys Grinter, lead author of the research, said: “When you give Huc more concentrated hydrogen, it produces more electric current, which means you can use it in fuel cells to power more complex devices, such as smartwatches, or smartphones and more complex laptop computers. Maybe even a car.
Projects to generate power from wind are clearly in their infancy, but it would be hard to exaggerate the potential ramifications if one of these technologies were to become scalable.
Generating power from thin air would solve countless issues related to climate change and other negative environmental externalities associated with energy production.
Moreover, technology like the bacterial enzyme could theoretically be accessed anywhere in the world, making the geopolitics of energy production more fair and decentralized, in short, could one day upend the global economy.