Photo: Pixabay/Pexels
“There is a lot of energy in rain,” says Siowling Soh, an engineer at the National University of Singapore. “If we can tap into this vast amount of energy, we can move toward a more sustainable society.” The new method harnesses tiny bursts of energy sparked when rain plunks into a narrow tube. Oppositely charged particles become spatially divided, creating a voltage. The team dripped rainlike drops into a tube two millimeters wide, about the width of a grain of rice. Inside the tube, the water driblets flowed with air pockets between them, creating a plug flow that produced enough electricity to continuously power 12 LED lightbulbs. “We think it will be helpful in rainy places, including tropical countries like Singapore,” Soh says. The method could be scaled up by installing rain-catching tubes on roofs or next to water sources that create spurts of water ideal for plug flow, such as waterfalls.
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