A fuel cell that harvests energy from microbes living in dirt(news.northwestern.edu)
news.northwestern.edu
A fuel cell that harvests energy from microbes living in dirt
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/01/dirt-powered-fuel-cell-runs-forever/
3 comments
> generated 68x more power than needed to operate its sensors
> all components...can be purchased at a local hardware store
I can't help but think this would be used for surveillance. All you need is dirt to run a sensor and transmitter. But it's cool science.
It would be interesting to figure out how much does it take away from the soil biome's energy budget. If you did a whole acre of these, would the insects, worms, and millipedes take a hit, and then birds and reptiles etc.?
> all components...can be purchased at a local hardware store
I can't help but think this would be used for surveillance. All you need is dirt to run a sensor and transmitter. But it's cool science.
It would be interesting to figure out how much does it take away from the soil biome's energy budget. If you did a whole acre of these, would the insects, worms, and millipedes take a hit, and then birds and reptiles etc.?
A single acre of anything isn’t really enough to affect upper level life forms - birds, lizards, heck - even insects can move a few hundred feet that-a-way and get back to doing what they do.
Many kinds of soil bacteria aren't very picky about their choice of electron acceptor. They're "breathing" using wires instead of oxygen.