It is essentially the usual "breakthrough" that won't likey have any practical use for many years, the experimental device is tiny and produces very little power.
It seems you need one billion of these devices to get 1 kW.
>The device, the size of a fingernail and thinner than a single hair, is dotted with tiny holes known as nanopores. The holes have a diameter smaller than 100 nanometers, or less than a thousandth of the width of a strand of human hair.
>While one prototype only produces a small amount of energy — almost enough to power a dot of light on a big screen — because of its size, Yao said Air-gens can be stacked on top of each other, potentially with spaces of air in between. Storing the electricity is a separate issue, he added.
>Yao estimated that roughly 1 billion Air-gens, stacked to be roughly the size of a refrigerator, could produce a kilowatt and partly power a home in ideal conditions. The team hopes to lower both the number of devices needed and the space they take up by making the tool more efficient. Doing that could be a challenge.
A fridge is 25 cubic feet, so 40 watts per cubic foot. A Dell E2422H monitor uses 13 watts while powered on. So a box 0.325 cubic feet could power a monitor, or a cube of 8.25" edge length. Assuming it was 100% efficient and endless supply of humid air etc.
Floridians are getting really excited right now.
If I could have 5 refrigerator-sized boxes in my backyard powering my house, I would be in.
Yep, but that would be 5 billion "cells".
How much would a "nail sized" cell cost?
If 0.001 $ (1/1000 of a dollar), that would be a nice, round 5 million dollar.
I wouldn't be surprised (if this humidity device actually works and can be bettered) that working regrigerator sized units will be availably in 2040 and be actually affordable by the 2070's.
I wonder if the kind of lithography used for semiconductor manufactur would be a useful way to produce this material?
a kilowatt for a fridge is pretty good honestly, and it stacks vertically.
Or you integrate it with the underside of solar panels for better yield.
1KW/"fridge" is a lot more than I was expecting.
Finally, because air humidity diffuses in three-dimensional space and the thickness of the Air-gen device is only a fraction of the width of a human hair, many thousands of them can be stacked on top of each other, efficiently scaling up the amount of energy without increasing the footprint of the device. Such an Air-gen device would be capable of delivering kilowatt-level power for general electrical utility usage.
My parents' house had a Honeywell brand electrostatic air filter in front of the air handler that wasn't cost-prohibitive to operate, and didn't have a drip pan or anything so I don't think it stripped moisture either. We'd just toss the large metal filter cartridges in the dish-washer periodically, which barely fit. They didn't pose a significant air restriction, unlike conventional pleated physical filters.
> Note: Avoid portable air cleaners and furnace/HVAC filters that intentionally produce ozone. Ozone is a lung irritant. Note that in some cases, air cleaners that contain electrostatic precipitators, ionizers, UV lights without adequate lamp coatings, and plasma air cleaners may have the potential to emit ozone. Both the California Air Resources Board and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers maintain lists of air cleaners that have been tested and shown to emit little or no ozone.
from: https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/guide-air-cleaner...
following the link to the california one you get:
> Electronic: Air cleaners that are listed as "Electronic" may be capable of generating small amounts of ozone, but have been tested and found to produce an ozone emission concentration less than 0.050 parts per million. This category includes ionizers, electrostatic precipitators, PCOs, hydroxyl generators, devices with UV light components, and other electronic air cleaning technologies.
I imagine electrostatic precipitators would fall into that category