Using something Invisible in the Air to Generate Electricity Like Perpetual Motion Machine

Imagine a device that is placed somewhere in your house. All your home appliances and lighting equipment are connected to it. You do n’t need to invest any money and materials, and then you will have 24 hours of continuous power supply at home No matter whether it is windy or rainy or not, whether there is sun or not, you will have electricity as long as the surrounding air does not dry up. What would you call this device? Perpetual motion? There is no perpetual motion machine in the world, but the device described above does exist. It was just invented by Jun Yao, an electrical engineer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and his team. It is called an air generator (Air-gen). However, electric energy currently produced is extremely limited.

source: Nature journal

Air-gen is not a perpetual motion machine, it just uses what we can't see-the water gradient in the air to generate electricity. Another core person of the team, microbiologist Derek Loveli discovered that a microorganism of the genus Geobacter can produce conductive protein nanowires, and has been studying how to make it Practical application. After years of hard work, scientists made Geobacillus a 7-micron-thick protein nanowire film, installed two electrodes, and after being exposed to the air, the nanowire film was able to absorb water vapor in the air, between the two electrodes Conducting a continuous current creates a voltage gradient across the device.

                                                                  source: Nature journal

The researchers believe that the charge may be generated by a water gradient, which can form the transmission of protons in the nanowire material, thereby generating a constant electric field or resting potential similar to that in biological systems. At present, the device can produce a continuous voltage of 0.5 volts, and the current density is about 17 microamperes per square centimeter. It may seem trivial, but researchers say that connecting multiple devices can generate enough power to charge smartphones and other small electronic devices, and can be used in dry desert areas like the Sahara. In the future, protein nanowire materials can be combined with wall coatings to make large-scale air power generation systems, thereby making greater contributions to clean energy. The most gratifying thing is that scientists can already use Escherichia coli to produce protein nanowire film, which solves the production bottleneck and can provide a cheaper solution.

If successful, this device seems to be very close to "perpetual motion machine", it can be said to be "perpetual motion machine that is not perpetual motion machine". Only by using the moisture gradient in the air, the electrical energy generated per unit area may still be too small. I do n’t know how much area of ​​“air generator” is needed to provide enough power for the increasingly “great” human energy consumption?
The first version of this paper was published in Nature in February 2020.