Electricity from raindrops (Photo: FreePik, Eyeem)
Singapore – raindrops that fall through a thin, plastic -coated vertical tube can generate electricity to a significant extent. Siowling from the National University of Singapore And his team found 3 light emits to me during experiments. The principle is based on friction. Gring 2 materials – in this case water and plastic – together, static electricity arises.
Secret “plug flow”
The water simply flows through, but nothing happens. Rather, a so -called plug flow has to be set, while the water falls through the tube. This means that experts understand a flow distributed evenly over the entire cross -section, which only slows down on the edges, the contact surfaces with plastic. In this case, loads separate that can be tapped as electrical current between water and plastic.
“With the plug flow, we can generate electricity from rain,” says soh. With very fine tubes, the generation of electricity with water worked in previous tests. However, due to the surface tension, the droplets refuse to flow through such tight openings. They have to be pumped through, which requires more electricity than the drops can generate – therefore unusable in practice.
Roofs full of rain generators
That is why it tried with tubes that have such a big diameter that the drops voluntarily fall through. When it was still possible to generate a plug flow, the rain generator was born. The pipe that the SoH and his team used has a diameter of 2 millimeters and is 32 centimeters long.
The frontal impact of the droplets onto the upper opening of the pipe triggers a plug flow in the form of short water columns that fall through. After all, 10 percent of the water’s kinetic energy could be converted into electricity. So I believe that many of these power plants can be installed on roofs in the future in order to create significant amounts of electricity.
Source: www.pressetext.com
(PTE004/17.04.2025/06: 10)