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Osmosis consumes and produces water
An acid-base battery will consume and produce water, while providing an electrical current (Weng, 2019). The chemical basis of this is the asymmetric distribution of hydrogen in the two compartments of an acid-base cell. The alkaline compartment has a shortage of H, it favours H2O collapsing into O2 while releasing 4 electrons, and the acidic compartment has an excess of H, and favours the production of water as long as electrons are provided from the alkaline compartment.
An acid-base battery produces its proton gradient by adding a base, such as potassium hydroxide, to one compartment, and an acid, such as hydrochloric acid, to the other. Since the proton gradient is what powers the acid-base battery, and not the mechanism used to generate it, it is reasonable to predict that other ways of generating a proton gradient should result in a similar acid-base battery, one that also consumes and produces water while releasing an electrical current.
It has recently been discovered that osmosis is driven by the generation of a proton gradient across the osmotic membrane (Zhao, 2009). Knowing that a proton gradient is what powers an acid-base battery, it can be predicted that a similar behaviour should occur from the proton gradient in osmosis. Water ought to be consumed in one compartment, and produced in the other, accompanied by an electric current.
That osmosis is powered by a proton gradient has gone undiscovered since the machinery that generates this gradient, a thin layer of an electrically polarized solid phase of water, generated from the water pushing against the sides of the container, is not visible without a microscope. This compressed ice is favoured at surfaces because it is denser than water, because it has excluded the protons that link the molecular ice sheets together in ice.
This compressed ice is inherently a proton pump because it will eject its protons away from the surface it forms against, leaving a net negative charge at the surface. This negative surface charge will force protons to transfer to the other side of the surface, if the surface is permeable to protons. It therefore provides a means to generate a proton gradient that does not rely on the addition of acid and base, and should be expected to move water in the same way an acid-base battery does.