A Colony of Blue-Green Algae Can Power a Computer For Six Months (interestingengineering.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: Researchers from the University of Cambridge have managed to run a computer for six months, using blue-green algae as a power source. A type of cyanobacteria called Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 -- commonly known as "blue-green algae," which produces oxygen through photosynthesis when exposed to sunlight, was sealed in a small container, about the size of an AA battery, made of aluminum and clear plastic.
Christopher Howe from the University of Cambridge and colleagues claim that similar photosynthetic power generators could be the source of power for a range of small devices in the future, without the need for the rare and unsustainable materials used in batteries. The battery made of blue-green algae has provided a continuous current across its anode and cathode that ran a microprocessor. The computer ran in cycles of 45 minutes. It was used to calculate sums of consecutive integers to simulate a computational workload, which required 0.3 microwatts of power, and 15 minutes of standby, which required 0.24 microwatts. The microcontroller measured the device's current output and stored this data in the cloud for researchers to analyze.
Howe suggests that there are two potential theories for the power source. Either the bacteria itself produces electrons, which creates a current, or it creates conditions in which an aluminum anode in the container is corroded in a chemical reaction that produces electrons. The experiment ran without any significant degrading of the anode and because of that, the researchers believe that the bacteria is producing the bulk of the current. Howe says that the approach could be scaled up, but further research is needed to figure out how far. The research was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Christopher Howe from the University of Cambridge and colleagues claim that similar photosynthetic power generators could be the source of power for a range of small devices in the future, without the need for the rare and unsustainable materials used in batteries. The battery made of blue-green algae has provided a continuous current across its anode and cathode that ran a microprocessor. The computer ran in cycles of 45 minutes. It was used to calculate sums of consecutive integers to simulate a computational workload, which required 0.3 microwatts of power, and 15 minutes of standby, which required 0.24 microwatts. The microcontroller measured the device's current output and stored this data in the cloud for researchers to analyze.
Howe suggests that there are two potential theories for the power source. Either the bacteria itself produces electrons, which creates a current, or it creates conditions in which an aluminum anode in the container is corroded in a chemical reaction that produces electrons. The experiment ran without any significant degrading of the anode and because of that, the researchers believe that the bacteria is producing the bulk of the current. Howe says that the approach could be scaled up, but further research is needed to figure out how far. The research was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
Complete bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
What is it with the bad headlines? A micropower microcontroller is not a "computer" in any reasonable sense.
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What is it with the bad headlines? A micropower microcontroller is not a "computer" in any reasonable sense.
And then they uploaded the data to the cloud, which would have taken far more energy than the 0.3 micro watts they were generating.
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Indeed. Probably pushing it out of the MCU via high impedance serial and then some real computer does the upload.
Re:Complete bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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If it scales up linearly from an AA battery, it would take a 585,000 gallon battery to power a 300w computer. Assuming I didn't mess up my math somewhere.
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Regardless of it being Harvard or Von Newman architecture, if it is reprogrammable it is technically a computer versus a Finite State Machine. An Arm Cortex M0+ definitely qualifies as such, was chosen due to its low power design, and much more powerful than a low-power 8-bit PIC that I probably would have chosen. Sleep down in the 50 nanao-amp with run at 1MHz in the 45 microamp range.. and includes WiFi.
(https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/30009941J.pdf)
PVSolar started with a concept and too
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I agree that Slashdot has some doozies sometimes... but in this case, the problem wasn't the headline, it was your flawed assumptions. The very first thought I had when I read the headline was "what scale of computer are we talking about"? And if that wasn't your instinct, too, I feel like you need to retrain your nerd reflexes. ;)
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What I really have an issue with in TFA are the words 'micropower' and 'theories'. First of all they're talking about nanowatts, really, since it's fractions of a microwatt; I'm pretty sure I can 'generate' more power than that by spitting on the anode and cathode used and slapping them together. Secondly, even in the summary it's made clear that they don't even r
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Yes. And in that sense an Abacus is a computer too. Because the headline did not say "electronic" computer. Still a lie by misdirection. And at those energy levels, it may be an entirely different effect and the algae are just decoration. Hell, they need to use heavy shielding on the whole thing to not just get a lot more power from environmental RF.
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It's a computer by any actual definition. The headline is stupid because "powered a computer" is vague, as in twelve orders of magnitude vague.
Pretty much all headlines are stupid though. This one is just obviously stupid to a computer literate audience. Now imagine the unrecognized stupidity of all the ones that don't seem obviously stupid to you.
If only people understood numbers.
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And so is an abacus, because the headline did not say "electronic" computer...
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So is a human. Aside from thought experiments invented by internet pedants, both fit in those twelve orders of magnitude of power requirement.
Cultivated algae has actually been a favourite proposal for powering human computers (and non-computing varieties) for decades.
Coooooool (Score:2)
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Speaking of kids and science, I'm pretty sure a potato battery generates a higher wattage.
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The summary said they're not sure if the algae is producing the current or not. They've got metal in an electrolyte so it's not a given that it's the algae.
I don't see why you'd ever want something like this instead of a regular PV cell and a battery.
for six months? (Score:2)
after which the algae dies?
Given that algae gets its energy from the sun, why not just use a solar cell
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Manufacturing? algae grows on its own accord when left alone, no? The same cannot be said for solar cells.
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algae can replicate and assemble its own materials at scale. but let's be honest, this sort of stuff is many decades away from being practical.
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after which the algae dies?
Six months was the length of the experiment not the length of the battery.
Given that algae gets its energy from the sun, why not just use a solar cell
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of an experiment to determine if it was possible to use algae?
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If the experiment is to determine if algae can produce energy, it's a success. If the experiment is to the feasibility of using algae to produce electricity, it's a failure.
Kinda like experimenting if an orb of plutonium could be used as a weight to pull down a rope and rotate a generator...
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Invest in Algae (Score:5, Funny)
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A spore drive.
Potato (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. I was building potato powered clocks years ago.
How well did it work at night? (Score:3)
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Who cares? They are consuming 0.3 microwatts, about 1/200,000,000th of what you need to run a laptop.
The applications are extremely limited. You can harvest more energy than that from the sun, from radio waves, from small nuclear batteries, from heat differentials and more. It's hard to imagine a situation where you would want a tiny amount of power for 6 months and there wasn't a better option.
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Experiments are usually done on small scale. It sounds like you are complaining because they did an experiment instead of a manufacturing run.
Best to do things a step at a time, that way the disasters are much smaller... 8-)
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I complained because to make it into something that can run a computer, as the headline suggests, they need to improve it by a factor of two hundred million times.
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I complained because to make it into something that can run a computer, as the headline suggests, they need to improve it by a factor of two hundred million times.
To do the experiment, to prove the concept, they only need a few cells. So that sounds about right.
Deja Vu all over again (Score:1)
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Sad news for you, one potato cut into pieces and then made into battery can indeed provide power to light a room for a month, unlike the wimpy fraction of a microwatt of this article's experiment. Six months, no problem get six potatoes!
My herd of singing potatoes stomps your pond scum!
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
found the experiment, potato the answer to all life's problems! Sadness, sickness and/or depression, potato whiskey! Dark? Potato batteries! Need baked goods? Potato bread, cake and donuts! Annoying senile politician running your country into economic ruin while being weak to Russian thug? Bean him with a potato!
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well to be honest jamming dissimilar metals into all manner of tubers, veggie or fruits or energy politician's ass would make power. So don't really need spuds.
Re: Deja Vu all over again (Score:2)
According to google a potato produces about 0.5V and 0.0002A, so a potato would produce the same amount of electrical evergy as this algae battery in about 13 hours.
I imagine if you prepared the potato in a lab environment and sealed it in a container so it wouldn't rot or dry out, it would last 6 months too.
That's nothing... (Score:2)
I made it through six months of CS grad school powered by nothing but ramen and Mountain Dew... like the gods intended.
Just as in The Matrix (Score:2)
FUTURE arrived just in time (Score:2)
IF it can scale to production. Much of the power for life’s little pleasures, can be sustainable.
Now back to regularly scheduled programming UKA war, oil and unemployment disruptions
Algae is the solution (Score:3)
Lately I've been on a biofuel kick. Mostly because I don't think electric is the end all solution for cars. Diesel has 27x the energy density of our best battery technology, and batteries require mining that is bad for the environment, as well as exploits children in some cases for the raw materials.
Turns out Algae is pretty good for making biodiesel, and even the process for crude oil started with Algae that died, fell to the bottom of the ocean and got buried by additional layers of algae and sediment. Years of heat and pressure caused the carbon to form long chains with other elements latching to the outside of the molecule. Algae is not only great for making biodiesel, but it also sequesters carbon, which is what this article is all about. Algae uses CO2 to create its cells and structures. Not only can it sequester carbon from CO2, but there has been studies on using it for cleaning up methane (CH4) from manure, so there's another greenhouse gas it's great at breaking down. Finally algae is great at breaking down Nitrate (NO3). Currently California has a few grants available for using algae to clean up manure. All this stealing of carbon atoms from these molecules results in the release of Oxygen and Hydrogen. Algae can also sequester several types of heavy metals.
In addition to manure, there are studies being done to use it to sequester CO2 directly from power plants. University of Kentucky has had fantastic results of capturing CO2 from coal fired power plants into Algae reactors. https://youtu.be/QI3Al1dpuUY [youtu.be] . They're not the only ones doing it, there are a lot of different studies out there with different bioreactor designs. After harvesting the biodiesel from algae the byproduct can be used for everything from animal feed to makeup products. Even plastics can be made from the byproduct.
While some cite the Salton sea as an environmental disaster, it's a rather short sighted. The algae blooms sequester tons of CO2 and release tons of oxegen back into the air. Ideally we'd have a lot of these environmental disasters around the world. Pump seawater into the Sahara and other deserts around the world.
There's a lot of good talks if you look into it. Here's a good ted talk on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Blue-Screen (Score:2)
Barely detected corrosion of the aluminium? (Score:2)
It's 1.3mW/hr of energy over 6 months. That's fuck all and I'm surprised if you would notice the amount of galvanic corrosion that would be required to produce that tiny amount of energy.
It's less than 5 joules.
They didn't even say if they measured how thick the oxide layer on the aluminium was before and after the experiment.