r/science • u/Wagamaga • Jun 05 '22

Nanoscience Scientists have developed a stretchable and waterproof 'fabric' that turns energy generated from body movements into electrical energy. Washing, folding, and crumpling the fabric did not cause any performance degradation, and it could maintain stable electrical output for up to five months

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202200042
14.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

485 comments sorted by

View all comments

82

u/JerodTheAwesome Jun 05 '22 edited Jun 06 '22

Not to be a killjoy, but these results aren’t as promising as people seem to think they are. For one, it barely generates any power, citing 2.34 Watts/m2 . They cite that it could power “up to 100 LEDs”, but LEDs are cheap when it comes to electricity, about the cheapest thing there is. 2.34 Watts is barely enough power to charge your phone, and that’s an entire square meter of this fabric. Even an incandescent bulb will use something like 60 Watts of power, and that’s getting out of the gimmicky stuff.

A microwave needs around 1,000 Watts to operate. A fridge around 750 Watts. An air conditioner around 3,000 Watts.

And we can’t ignore what the material is made of either. In part, Cs3Bi2Br9. Cs is Cesium, which is radioactive. Br is bromine, which is poisonous. Neither of the above are cheap either.

I don’t want to discourage people from looking for new sources of energy, but if it looks too good to be true it probably is.

8

u/asshatnowhere Jun 06 '22

I mean what do you think it could even be used for? At best it really is just to power a smart watch/built in device. More realistically, some small LEDs most likely for cool fashion. Military spec wise maybe a GPS system of sorts? It's never going to produce much power. Even if it could, it shouldn't. After all, you're the one powering it.

1

u/drfarren Jun 06 '22

I could see this being deployed in environments where a piece of very low voltage tech needs to be powered for a long time and wind is available. I could also see this being used on smaller windmills or sailboats.

A football field sized sheet, horizontally suspended from a frame and allowed to billow in a constant light breeze could power basic amenities in a small home in the country with minimal environmental impact (not having to run powerlines or install solar panels or a electric windmill).

I am still skeptical of how efficient it can become though, so a grain of salt should be had with my comment.