{"id":24497,"date":"2016-04-09T10:47:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T17:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/scientists-are-developing-graphene-solar-panels-that-generate-energy-when-it-rains"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:02:52","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:02:52","slug":"scientists-are-developing-graphene-solar-panels-that-generate-energy-when-it-rains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/scientists-are-developing-graphene-solar-panels-that-generate-energy-when-it-rains","title":{"rendered":"Scientists are developing graphene solar panels that generate energy when it rains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-are-developing-graphene-solar-panels-that-generate-energy-when-it-rains.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Solar power is making <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/the-world-s-largest-floating-solar-power-plant-is-being-built-in-japan\">huge strides<\/a> as a reliable, renewable energy source, but there\u2019s still a lot of untapped potential in terms of the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and what happens at night and during inclement weather. Now a solution has been put forward in the form of producing energy from raindrops.<\/p>\n<p>Key to the new process <a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/energywise\/green-tech\/solar\/graphene-could-help-generate-power-from-rain\">is graphene<\/a>: a \u2018wonder\u2019 material we\u2019ve heard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/wonder-material-graphene-has-been-turned-into-a-superconductor\">plenty about before<\/a>. Because raindrops are not made up of pure water, and contain various salts that split up into positive and negative ions, a team from the Ocean University of China in Qingdao thinks we can harness power via a simple chemical reaction. Specifically, they want to use graphene sheets to separate the positively charged ions in rain (including sodium, calcium, and ammonium) and in turn generate electricity.<\/p>\n<p>Early tests, using slightly salty water to simulate rain, have been promising: the researchers were able to generate hundreds of microvolts and achieve a respectable 6.53 percent solar-to-electric conversion efficiency from their customised solar panel.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/how-graphene-could-help-solar-panels-produce-energy-when-it-s-raining\">http:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/how-graphene-could-help-solar-pa...-s-raining<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Solar power is making huge strides as a reliable, renewable energy source, but there\u2019s still a lot of untapped potential in terms of the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and what happens at night and during inclement weather. Now a solution has been put forward in the form of producing energy from raindrops. Key to the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24497"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67749,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24497\/revisions\/67749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}