
Power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires - johnaaa
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2010-9
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nitrogen
If the protein can actually supply energy continuously, it has to be
maintaining a gradient. Whatever comprises the gradient has to go somewhere
when the energy is consumed.

So where does the water go? If the protein eventually becomes full of water,
then it's power storage, not generation.

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mrfusion
You’re asking the right questions. I’d like to understand the conservation of
energy angle on this.

You usually have to expend energy to get water out of the air, no?

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Isamu
An old scout trick to get water out of the air is to use a plastic sheet to
make a "solar still", moisture condenses on the underside of the sheet and is
collected in a cup. The environment provides the energy and moisture.

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nitrogen
That is a cool trick, but in that case the energy gradient is from inside to
outside the sheet (sunlight heats the air under the sheet), right?

I'm sure the researchers have thought of this, but it wasn't in the abstract.

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mrfusion
How about a self powered drone that lives in a cloud? Wouldn’t that be cool,
if just travels the world cloud to cloud.

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theandrewbailey
Maybe we could run a program on that drone and have... cloud computing.

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Kliment
Readable link [https://sci-
hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-02...](https://sci-
hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2010-9)

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spincicli
re, we fabricated an electric generator from a thin film of protein nanowires
that produces continuous current for at least 20 h before self- recharging,
with a more than two orders of " thanks 4link. Recharging? Drying?

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johnaaa
[https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-generate-
electricity...](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-generate-electricity-
out-of-thin-air-with-device-that-runs-on-humidity/amp)

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misterkgb
The title of the paper is misleading -- it's not generating energy from
ambient humidity, but from sitting across a humidity gradient (i.e. sitting in
a bucket of water on one end).

Still a really cool advancement, but not some magical de-humidification
technology.

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spincicli
The water seems to wick through the stacked nanotubes, somehow the nano
structure develops a charge, bio energetic effect from a skeleton kinda?

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spincicli
dimensions, stacking thin-film devices in the vertical direction with a 1/1
film/airgap ratio can lead to a practical volumetric power density of more
than 1 kW m−3 (Supplemen- tary Fig. 24), potentially outperforming solar
cells,

