Self-Charging Battery Generates Electricity From Moisture In The Air

Half of the solar energy that bathes the Earth in warmth goes into a single process, according to some researchers: Evaporating the water that covers some 71 percent of our fragile blue marble, Loz Blain reported for New Atlas.

Photo Insert: Lab test cells used to power a pocket calculator.

Australian company Strategic Elements wants that energy back, and it's working with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to develop a flexible, self-charging battery technology that harvests electrical energy from moisture in the air to directly power devices without ever needing to plug them in.

The company's shares leapt more than 40 percent on the Australian stock exchange after it announced what it calls a "step-change" in this self-charging technology, increasing its electrical charge capability from the milliamp-hour range up into the ampere hours.

Strategic Elements calls this tech "Energy Ink," and says it's non-flammable, created from safe, green, and sustainable materials and that it can be printed onto flexible plastic.

A recent study on flexible, printable graphene oxide-based moisture-electric generators (MEGs) was authored by a team mainly from the UNSW's Materials Science and Engineering School and a senior research scientist at CSIRO and published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Nano Energy.

One immediate market it's targeting: battery-powered fitness wearables. The human body produces plenty of moisture over the course of a day, you'll have noticed – particularly when you're exercising.

The company says this humidity-powered technology already makes more than enough power to run "most existing devices in the large US$10 billion Electronic Skin Patch market," and that it expects to have a technology demonstrator up and running by the third quarter of this year to prove it can do the job, powering devices that never need to be put on a charger other than your own sweaty skin.

Strategic Elements says it uses graphene oxide, and it's under development in conjunction with UNSW and CSIRO.

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