IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v13y2022i1d10.1038_s41467-022-31221-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Self-sustained electricity generator driven by the compatible integration of ambient moisture adsorption and evaporation

Author

Listed:
  • Jin Tan

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

  • Sunmiao Fang

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

  • Zhuhua Zhang

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
    Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

  • Jun Yin

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

  • Luxian Li

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

  • Xiang Wang

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

  • Wanlin Guo

    (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
    Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

Abstract

Generating sustainable electricity from ambient humidity and natural evaporation has attracted tremendous interest recently as it requires no extra mechanical energy input and is deployable across all weather and geography conditions. Here, we present a device prototype for enhanced power generation from ambient humidity. This prototype uses both heterogenous materials assembled from a LiCl-loaded cellulon paper to facilitate moisture adsorption and a carbon-black-loaded cellulon paper to promote water evaporation. Exposing such a centimeter-sized device to ambient humidity can produce voltages of around 0.78 V and a current of around 7.5 μA, both of which can be sustained for more than 10 days. The enhanced electric output and durability are due to the continuous water flow that is directed by evaporation through numerous, negatively charged channels within the cellulon papers. The voltage and current exhibit an excellent scaling behavior upon device integration to sufficiently power commercial devices including even cell phones. The results open a promising prospect of sustainable electricity generation based on a synergy between spontaneous moisture adsorption and water evaporation.

Suggested Citation

  • Jin Tan & Sunmiao Fang & Zhuhua Zhang & Jun Yin & Luxian Li & Xiang Wang & Wanlin Guo, 2022. "Self-sustained electricity generator driven by the compatible integration of ambient moisture adsorption and evaporation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-31221-7
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31221-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31221-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-022-31221-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wanghuai Xu & Huanxi Zheng & Yuan Liu & Xiaofeng Zhou & Chao Zhang & Yuxin Song & Xu Deng & Michael Leung & Zhengbao Yang & Ronald X. Xu & Zhong Lin Wang & Xiao Cheng Zeng & Zuankai Wang, 2020. "A droplet-based electricity generator with high instantaneous power density," Nature, Nature, vol. 578(7795), pages 392-396, February.
    2. Peng Tao & George Ni & Chengyi Song & Wen Shang & Jianbo Wu & Jia Zhu & Gang Chen & Tao Deng, 2018. "Solar-driven interfacial evaporation," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 3(12), pages 1031-1041, December.
    3. Jun Yin & Zhuhua Zhang & Xuemei Li & Jin Yu & Jianxin Zhou & Yaqing Chen & Wanlin Guo, 2014. "Waving potential in graphene," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 5(1), pages 1-6, May.
    4. Yaxin Huang & Huhu Cheng & Ce Yang & Panpan Zhang & Qihua Liao & Houze Yao & Gaoquan Shi & Liangti Qu, 2018. "Interface-mediated hygroelectric generator with an output voltage approaching 1.5 volts," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-8, December.
    5. Xiaomeng Liu & Hongyan Gao & Joy E. Ward & Xiaorong Liu & Bing Yin & Tianda Fu & Jianhan Chen & Derek R. Lovley & Jun Yao, 2020. "Power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires," Nature, Nature, vol. 578(7796), pages 550-554, February.
    6. Jidong Li & Yuyang Long & Zhili Hu & Jiyuan Niu & Tiezhu Xu & Maolin Yu & Baowen Li & Xuemei Li & Jianxin Zhou & Yanpeng Liu & Cheng Wang & Laifa Shen & Wanlin Guo & Jun Yin, 2021. "Kinetic photovoltage along semiconductor-water interfaces," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-6, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qiang, Ziyi & Cui, Peilin & Tian, Chenyun & Liu, Runkeng & Shen, Hong & Liu, Zhenyu, 2023. "Enhancing power generation for carbon black film device based on optimization of liquid capillary flow," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 351(C).
    2. Su Yang & Lei Zhang & Jianfeng Mao & Jianmiao Guo & Yang Chai & Jianhua Hao & Wei Chen & Xiaoming Tao, 2024. "Green moisture-electric generator based on supramolecular hydrogel with tens of milliamp electricity toward practical applications," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
    3. Puying Li & Yajie Hu & Wenya He & Bing Lu & Haiyan Wang & Huhu Cheng & Liangti Qu, 2023. "Multistage coupling water-enabled electric generator with customizable energy output," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jiayue Tang & Yuanyuan Zhao & Mi Wang & Dianyu Wang & Xuan Yang & Ruiran Hao & Mingzhan Wang & Yanlei Wang & Hongyan He & John H. Xin & Shuang Zheng, 2022. "Circadian humidity fluctuation induced capillary flow for sustainable mobile energy," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Puying Li & Yajie Hu & Wenya He & Bing Lu & Haiyan Wang & Huhu Cheng & Liangti Qu, 2023. "Multistage coupling water-enabled electric generator with customizable energy output," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    3. Yong Zhang & Tingting Yang & Kedong Shang & Fengmei Guo & Yuanyuan Shang & Shulong Chang & Licong Cui & Xulei Lu & Zhongbao Jiang & Jian Zhou & Chunqiao Fu & Qi-Chang He, 2022. "Sustainable power generation for at least one month from ambient humidity using unique nanofluidic diode," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    4. Ce Yang & Haiyan Wang & Jiaxin Bai & Tiancheng He & Huhu Cheng & Tianlei Guang & Houze Yao & Liangti Qu, 2022. "Transfer learning enhanced water-enabled electricity generation in highly oriented graphene oxide nanochannels," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    5. Haiyan Wang & Tiancheng He & Xuanzhang Hao & Yaxin Huang & Houze Yao & Feng Liu & Huhu Cheng & Liangti Qu, 2022. "Moisture adsorption-desorption full cycle power generation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    6. Song Zhang & Mingchao Chi & Jilong Mo & Tao Liu & Yanhua Liu & Qiu Fu & Jinlong Wang & Bin Luo & Ying Qin & Shuangfei Wang & Shuangxi Nie, 2022. "Bioinspired asymmetric amphiphilic surface for triboelectric enhanced efficient water harvesting," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    7. Su Yang & Lei Zhang & Jianfeng Mao & Jianmiao Guo & Yang Chai & Jianhua Hao & Wei Chen & Xiaoming Tao, 2024. "Green moisture-electric generator based on supramolecular hydrogel with tens of milliamp electricity toward practical applications," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
    8. Guo, Qijing & Yi, Hao & Jia, Feifei & Song, Shaoxian, 2022. "Vertical porous MoS2/hectorite double-layered aerogel as superior salt resistant and highly efficient solar steam generators," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 68-79.
    9. Haohao Gu & Kaixin Meng & Ruowei Yuan & Siyang Xiao & Yuying Shan & Rui Zhu & Yajun Deng & Xiaojin Luo & Ruijie Li & Lei Liu & Xu Chen & Yuping Shi & Xiaodong Wang & Chuanhua Duan & Hao Wang, 2024. "Rewritable printing of ionic liquid nanofilm utilizing focused ion beam induced film wetting," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, December.
    10. Zhuangzhi Sun & Chuanlong Han & Shouwei Gao & Zhaoxin Li & Mingxing Jing & Haipeng Yu & Zuankai Wang, 2022. "Achieving efficient power generation by designing bioinspired and multi-layered interfacial evaporator," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    11. Su, Jinbu & Zhang, Pengkui & Yang, Rui & Wang, Boli & Zhao, Heng & Wang, Weike & Wang, Chengbing, 2022. "MXene-based flexible and washable photothermal fabrics for efficiently continuous solar-driven evaporation and desalination of seawater," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 407-415.
    12. Huang, Jian & Hu, Yanwei & Bai, Yijie & He, Yurong & Zhu, Jiaqi, 2020. "Solar membrane distillation enhancement through thermal concentration," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    13. Zhou, Han & Liu, Guoxu & Bu, Tianzhao & Wang, Zheng & Cao, Jie & Wang, Zhaozheng & Zhang, Zhi & Dong, Sicheng & Zeng, Jianhua & Cao, Xiaoxin & Zhang, Chi, 2024. "Autonomous cantilever buck switch for ultra-efficient power management of triboelectric nanogenerator," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 357(C).
    14. Xin Xia & Ziqing Zhou & Yinghui Shang & Yong Yang & Yunlong Zi, 2023. "Metallic glass-based triboelectric nanogenerators," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-12, December.
    15. Hao, Guannan & Dong, Xiangwei & Li, Zengliang, 2021. "A novel piezoelectric structure for harvesting energy from water droplet: Theoretical and experimental studies," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    16. Zhang, Lenan & Xu, Zhenyuan & Bhatia, Bikram & Li, Bangjun & Zhao, Lin & Wang, Evelyn N., 2020. "Modeling and performance analysis of high-efficiency thermally-localized multistage solar stills," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    17. Qiang, Ziyi & Cui, Peilin & Tian, Chenyun & Liu, Runkeng & Shen, Hong & Liu, Zhenyu, 2023. "Enhancing power generation for carbon black film device based on optimization of liquid capillary flow," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 351(C).
    18. Zhipeng Zhao & Huizeng Li & An Li & Wei Fang & Zheren Cai & Mingzhu Li & Xiqiao Feng & Yanlin Song, 2021. "Breaking the symmetry to suppress the Plateau–Rayleigh instability and optimize hydropower utilization," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-7, December.
    19. Chaojie Chen & Shilong Zhao & Caofeng Pan & Yunlong Zi & Fangcheng Wang & Cheng Yang & Zhong Lin Wang, 2022. "A method for quantitatively separating the piezoelectric component from the as-received “Piezoelectric” signal," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    20. Gong, Biyao & Yang, Huachao & Wu, Shenghao & Tian, Yikuan & Yan, Jianhua & Cen, Kefa & Bo, Zheng & Ostrikov, Kostya (Ken), 2021. "Phase change material enhanced sustained and energy-efficient solar-thermal water desalination," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 301(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-31221-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.