The environment harbors vast untapped energy sources, making electricity harvesting from clean and renewable resources an urgent global priority. New water-evaporation-induced power generation technology has garnered significant attention. This study proposes a porous electrical power generation device that can generate electricity under water stimulation by directly coating graphene/carbon nanotubes (G/CNTs) onto porous fiber fabrics prepared via the spunlacing process. This approach creates a hierarchical porosity approaching the Debye length, which facilitates the generation of electrical energy. A small amount of G/CNTs suffices to achieve this power generation performance; more power is not necessarily better. Increasing the salt solution concentration greatly enhances the power generation performance. Higher temperatures and a lower relative humidity drive the generation of more electrical energy. Under conditions of 25 °C and 40% RH, each device achieves an average open-circuit voltage of 116 mV and a short-circuit current of 1202 nA. Integrating the power generation device with constant humidity devices enables application in data centers, achieving synergy between environmental management and renewable energy generation. The humidification efficiency difference of the constant humidity machine with the power generation module as the wet film is less than 3% under the standard working condition. With the increase of ambient temperature and air volume, the relative humidity decreases, which is conducive to improving the humidification capacity and power generation capacity. The integrated system achieves an open-circuit voltage of 2.99 V and a short-circuit current of 1.83 mA. This provides a new method for applying water evaporation electricity generation.
Chen et al. (Fri,) studied this question.