Ironscale generator: energy from rain, solid state, no coppe

might also be partly the triboelectric effect, and to some extend also ionic(static) and LC resonance. ofcource while some effects will certainly be to a lesser extend depending on how and where it is used, perhaps if it gets more advanced and efficient thinking about those extra thigns might be usefull. since perhaps at some point learning how to harvest those forms of energy as well might increase energy.

the triboelectric and ionic(static) ones are obvious enough,
one extra means of capturing energy with this device would be to put a isolating layer below it and also add a energy capture terminal between the panels and the ground, this will result in it capturing both ionic energy and radiation energy as well, also more of the ionic charge captured in actual raindrops. so essentially then it will also act like both a radiation panel( teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/patents/us-patent-685957-apparatus-utilization-radiant-energy ) and a ionic energy capture device, both of which also are easy to make yet durable and quite useful when made and used well enough energy generation methods.

the LC  resonace effect is actually something different here and has a effect similar to the triboelectric effect but then more like ac(resonating). in this case it isn't the movement, or change in capacitor effect overlap or distance or static inducing friction or such but it is the water flowing over the panel actually also generating a deformation in and movement of the cacitor effect. while this mostly is effective if the rain is sour or salt or otherwise poluted, it does still work for high voltage low current in wind and rain. to optimize that the panels should be more like wires.


also I found a different method for creating such a device even more easily, sensitive to short cirquits even from the raindrops themselves, but with only 2 materials needed and also a much thinner insulating layer in between which in the case of the triboelectric effect should be more efficient with small energy impacts as long as the energy doesn't get high enough to penetrate or overbridge the small insulating layer.
to do this one method is to use aluminium or copper tape, aluminium tape is cheaper but as good as impossible to solder to and welding to it is hard as well especially since it is that thin so most likely needs the electric terminal to be friction or pressure connected but
aluminium tape conducts well from the top but the adhesive is quite much electrically insulating, so when attached carefully, speciffically carefully around the edges since those are where it would generate short cirquite(so either carefull or adding a thin strip of paper or such below the edges). but then you could just stick a small piece of aluminium tape on the surface of a metal sheet or plate and be done.

another way of making it, slightly more advanced and secure but might  require some maintainance possibly over time(needs to be tested for materials and conditions since materials react different to different conditions).
would be to have 2 metal plates or sheets and just put a paper towel or such in between which is soaked with salt water or electrolyte. then aply voltage to it depending on what side you want to be + and which side - this will result in a oxide layer forming on one of the 2 metals. in most metals the oxide layers are pretty electrically insulating, actually this is also one of the ways diodes used to be made so when you have your oxidized layer on a metal plate or sheet you might keep the wet towel in between but that would mean maintainance. but you could make a container which keeps in the salt and auto fills with rain. or even better would be to just directly place a clean metal plate to touch the oxidized metal sheet or also have the other metal sheet oxidized on one side and make both oxidized sides touch.
if one plate has a oxide layer and the other not you might get a diode. if both have a oxidation layer it might just be insulated. but having a diode working can be great when done right since small peaks in the wrong direction can be used channeled back to the right side.

Right.

Right now I'm working on improvements for the Ironscale.

I tried using it in real life rain and I realized that the biggest challenge is to force rain to land ONLY on the cathode (paperclip) and THEN roll down the anode (aluminum plate).

For the next model I plan on making two modifications: the paperclip will be worked so it spreads across all of one side of the plate. Also I will reverse the direction of flow since it's more likely for a raindrop to land on the large plate, THEN roll down to touch the paperclip. This could simplify the deployment in real-life rainfalls even more.

Ok so I've conducted (pun totally intended) some more experimentations with the Ironscale. We've also quantified a few things.

The aluminum tray plate is 14cm long and 5 cm large, so you can get a sense of the sizes involved. Total weight of the ironscale generator is only 3.3 grams.

We ended up inverting the entire ironscale upside down. The idea is that it's more likely for a raindrop to first hit the huge plate and then roll to the tiny paperclip, instead of the opposite. Of course, that works well, at least in a lab with tap water. What came as a surprise though is that there was no need to swap the positive/negative wires. The paperclip remains the positive. The plate remains negative. Very interesting. This could've been caused by the dissimilar metals, but that's only responsible for like 0.020 Volt max when we did the control test (no raindrops). As soon as there are drops of water rolling down on it it generated 0.480 Volts on average.

Another interesting thing was that we could finally measure some current. We measured 0.008 milliampere during rain simulation. If the paperclip then connects to the plate through a large drop of water that stands still, the current increases dramatically, up to 0.022 milliampere with a big droplet. The voltage remains constant. When dry, the current falls back to zero. Voltage remains the same.

We tried lighting a big LED, the kind found in solar lamps. We could not light the LED (this was expected, those LEDs require relatively high voltage). But we did notice a strange effect. When the LED was applied as a bridge from the plate to the paperclip, the voltage increased by about 0.070 V, and the current also increased by 0.015 mA. This might be caused by the photovoltaic property of LEDs, which can convert light into electricity a bit like a solar cell.

The ironscale we built also displays a strange property: it is un-shortable. In a normal capacitor, you can discharge it by touching both leads together ("short" it). The voltage therefore falls to zero. We could not short the ironscale once it was charged, regardless if it was wet or dry. We used a piece of wire to bridge the paperclip to the plate. In doing this we eventually succeeded in lowering the voltage to zero, but as soon as the wire was removed, the voltage restored itself back up. To explain why this is surprising, imagine a glass that's full of water. You tilt the glass down, the water falls on the ground. When you set the glass back on the table, it fills up with water again, all by itself. Some additional investigation will need to be carried out on this topic.

It could be that the dissimilar metals potential difference is somehow increased by subsequent manipulation of the large plate of aluminum, which is soft and whose surface area might have increased somehow. This would make the ironscale act as a galvanic battery, which is not desirable since the metals involved in galvanic batteries eventually get corroded (they generate electricity through chemical reactions and the electricity stops when all the metal have been subjected to the reactions). It could explain why the voltage restores itself. Next ironscale model will be made of same metal to investigate that possibility.