“The air contains an enormous amount of electricity.”

Posted BY: | NwoReport

In intriguing new research, scientists are continuing to explore the finding that the electrical currents surrounding us can be harvested — using a material made from living organisms.

In a statement, the University of Massachusetts Amherst announced that electrical engineer Jun Yao and his team had built upon prior research in a new paper in the journal Advanced Materials into what they call the “Air-gen effect.” The basic idea? Growing conducive nanofilms out of bacteria that can pull small amounts of electricity from the water vapor in the air.

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“The air contains an enormous amount of electricity,” Yao said in the school’s statement. “Think of a cloud, which is nothing more than a mass of water droplets. Each of those droplets contains a charge, and when conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt—but we don’t know how to reliably capture electricity from lightning. What we’ve done is to create a human-built, small-scale cloud that produces electricity for us predictably and continuously so that we can harvest it.”

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