一种利用雨水发电的新方法，每滴可以为100个LED灯泡供电

一种利用雨水发电的新方法，每滴可以为100个LED灯泡供电

Tapping into the water cycle and generating electricity from rainy days could be one way to grow our renewable energy use.

利用水循环和雨天发电可能是增加可再生能源使用的一种方式。

Until now, scientists have been unable to get water droplets to produce a significant amount of power - but we may finally have a breakthrough.

到目前为止，科学家们还不能让水滴产生大量的能量——但我们最终可能会取得突破。

While we're still a long way from umbrellas that double up as generators, the latest approach shows there might be a way to get power from rain showers at a level of efficiency that makes these systems practical.

虽然我们离把雨伞变成发电机还有很长一段路要走，但最新的方法表明，或许有一种方法可以从雨滴中获得能量，其效率可以让这些系统变得实用。

New research has found a method that could generate enough power from a single droplet of rain to light up 100 LED bulbs. That's a big jump forward in efficiency, in the region of several thousand times.

一项新的研究发现了一种方法，可以从一滴水中产生足够的能量来点亮100个LED灯泡。这在效率上是一个巨大的飞跃，大约是以前的几千倍。

Our research shows that a drop of 100 microlitres of water released from a height of 15 centimetres [5.9 inches] can generate a voltage of over 140V, and the power generated can light up 100 small LED lights, says biomedical engineer Wang Zuankai from the City University of Hong Kong (CityU).

“我们的研究表明，从15厘米(5.9英寸)的高度释放一滴100微升的水可以产生超过140V的电压，并且所产生的功率可以点亮100盏小型LED灯。”香港城市大学(CityU)生物医学工程师Wang Zuankai说道。

That sounds like a surprising amount of voltage, but the engineers used some ingenious tricks to make it happen.

这听起来令人惊讶，但工程师使用了一些巧妙的技巧来实现它。

Scientists have been looking into this type of power production for years, but the physics of converting the energy of raindrops into electricity are much harder to do than harvesting the energy from a rising tide or a flowing stream.

多年来，科学家一直在研究这种发电方式，但是将雨滴的能量转换为电能的物理学，比从涨潮或溪流中收集能量要难得多。

One of the improvements the team built into their droplet-based electricity generator (DEG) was the use of a polytetrafluoroethylene or PTFE film, which is able to accumulate a surface charge as it's continuously hit by water droplets, until it gradually reaches saturation.

该团队在他们的基于水滴的发电机(DEG)中进行的改进之一是使用聚四氟乙烯或PTFE薄膜，当它不断受到水滴的撞击时，能够积累表面电荷，直到逐渐达到饱和。

The team found that as water droplets hit the surface and spread out, the drops act as a 'bridge' that connects two electrodes: an aluminium electrode and an indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode (with the PTFE on top).

研究小组发现，当水滴撞击表面并扩散开来时，这些水滴充当了连接两个电极的“桥梁”:一个是铝电极，另一个是铟锡氧化物(ITO)电极(顶部是聚四氟乙烯)。

The droplet bridge in turn creates a closed-loop surface so that all of the collected energy can be released – droplets act as resistors, and the surface coating acts as a capacitor.

液滴桥反过来形成了一个闭环表面，这样所有收集的能量都可以释放——液滴作为电阻，表面涂层作为电容器。

This approach could eventually be applied anywhere that water hits a solid surface, the researchers say – the hull of a boat, the inside of a water bottle, or the top of an umbrella.

研究人员说，这种方法最终可以应用于任何水接触固体表面的地方——船体、水瓶内部或伞的顶部。

The significance of this technology is the much enhanced electric power per falling rain droplet, which makes the device much more efficient to convert energy from a falling droplet to electricity, chemist Xiao Cheng Zeng, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told Sarah Wells at Vice.

来自内布拉斯加大学林肯分校的化学家肖成曾告诉Vice网站的莎拉·威尔斯说:“这项技术的意义在于每一滴下落的雨滴都能产生更强的电能，这使得该装置更有效地将下落的雨滴转化为电能。”

There's plenty of work still to do to get this ready for practical use however, with the researchers hoping to have a prototype ready in the next five years.

然而，要让这项技术真正投入使用，还有大量的工作要做，研究人员希望在未来五年内研制出样机。

The research has been published in Nature.

这项研究发表在《自然》杂志上。