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Tapping Trees for Electricity?
dr_agonfly writes "Despite many skeptics, a Massachusetts company is getting investor interest in developing a process to tap electric power from trees. MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts with investor funding." From the article: "Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of MagCap's plans. 'I'm wildly skeptical,' he said. 'I would need to see proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for a number of reasons.'"
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Afterall, there was the man who did this accidentally!
My work here is dung.
How many amps? Enough to be worth it?
Medical equipment
Wheat/seed processessing for food
Water pumps & filtering systems
Electronic communications
Access to Slashdot out in "the bush"
However, the best idea ever is still Tomacco.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Broadband over electric trees?
On second thought, I don't think they have electricity in those dens. We'll be living better than ewoks!
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
a potato tree
Utter bullshit. Tell me how many watts you can produce. Because the question is not how many volts but how many AMPS. You aren't going to charge shit unless you can produce something more than a few microamps.
You bet !!
Ever seen "The Matrix"? What goes around, comes around.
Ah, I see. Trees produce lightning. But surely that would be more than 2 volts?
Dark Reflection
How about something more useful? Like wattage?
Coming up... Maxtrix Tree edition. Nah, doesn't seem as exciting as using humans.
So how much energy can one drain from a single tree? And would it harm it in any way? The energy has to come from somewhere.
to start getting posted.
Now that's what I call Flower Power
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Yeah ! just give me that funding and I will provide over 220 Volts from each tree. ...
No over 10000 Volts
Anyone
...except that there will be trees instead of humans!!! I love it! Also, no need to develop a VR world to keep trees happy and growing :-)!
MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts
Neither current nor power is measured in volts. If they can't get that right...
You're an immobile computer, remember?
"He expects to find investors to help pay for the research needed to figure a way to increase the tree power from less than 2 volts to 12 volts sometime this year, creating an alternative to fossil fuels." The article mentions nothing about amperage, while high voltage may be more efficient, wouldn't amperage be the more relevant question?
volts ain't power !
When you hook up two dissimilar electrodes through an electrolyte (which in this case is nicely packaged within a tree and the nearby ground), you get an electrochemical potential. In the case of copper and aluminum as your electrodes, the potential is about two volts.
An easy way to get 12 volts? Connect six tree-cells in series.
My guess is that iss no different from the classic lemon battery, just replacing the galvanized (zinc-coated) nail with an aluminum nail.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I pine for the day that this kind of energy production becomes poplar.
From the article:Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground. But the electricity is useless because it's unstable and fluctuates.
Here's the answer: 13 aluminum roofing nails, 13 copper pipes, hooked up in series to an automotive voltage regulator and an ampmeter. If you get a fluctuation between 5-20 amps, take out the ampmeter and replace it with fuse and a cigarette lighter adapter, and plug in your iGo charger to charge your cell phone off of it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's like thunder, (Boom!)
Fast as lightning, (ZzzzowZzowZowwww!)
These cover versions are frightening,
Ya better knock, knock, knock, knock, knock...
On wood.
Baby.
Oooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh!
All we have to do is wrap some magnet wire around Eddie Floyd (who wrote the original in 1966), and smother Amii Stewart in bar magnets.
Play the Amii Stewart 1978 disco version to spin Eddie Floyd's corpse up to several million RPM in one direction, and play the 2004 Rachael Stevens techno cover to get Amii spinning in the opposite direction at relativistic velocities, and you'll never lack for electricity again.
(It's only when you need to knock on wood that you realize the entire world's made of aluminum and plastic.)
The main problems is that he hasn't the slightest idea how to get useful electricity from a tree but yet he was able to apply for a patent. You can drive a ground rod and hoist a copper plate in the air. There will be an insignificant amount of energy generated between the two. Maybe I could patent that and the act of putting electrodes into a potato.
with real current!
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
Whenever I tap trees, I get green mana.
What's the amperage to go along with the voltage?
One also wonders if the voltage comes from the trees, or the fact that you have jabbed an aluminum spike into a water solution containing at least some dissolved electrolytes.
quick, be the first on your block with a tree powered alarm clock.
always mosh clockwise
...in Coconut Batteries.
With such a poor output, you would need an entire forest to power a TV set. While I find the article somewhat interesting, it lacks detail of any sort. It really just seems like the potato clock I saw on Mr Wizard as a kid.
http://religiousfreaks.com/I wonder if it's anything like those potato clock thingies?
Just read the article. He connects an aluminum nail to copper pipe in the ground, with a big wet tree inbetween.
Don't we call those things batteries?
He expects to find investors to help pay for the research needed to figure a way to increase the tree power from less than 2 volts to 12 volts sometime this year, creating an alternative to fossil fuels.
Last I heard, power was measured in Watts. It's hard to take people without a grasp on such fundamental concepts seriously.
(The obligatory Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volt)
The Matrix would have been much slower paced if Neo woke up to find himself an Ent.
Morpheus/Treebeard: "I have told your name to the Entmoot, and they have seen you, and they have agreed that you need to learn Kung Fu."
If it's a orange tree or just about any citrus tree, you can put electrodes into the fruit and get 1.5 volts per orange, put 8 of them in series and you can get your 12 volts. It would be enough to power a low power device like a radio or help charge a laptop, but you'd need a shitload of wires and orange trees to power your house.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Every one knows you can tap trees for energy. Can you say maple syrup? Let's see electricity make pancakes extra delicious. (And I suppose you could probably develop a syrup powered generator too...but that's a project for another day.)
But on a more serious note, where do people think that energy is coming from? Any energy that the tree has (whether it's in moving sap or the wood itself) came from the sun. It seems to me that this is a pretty roundabout way to extract solar power.
Instead of forests for Mana...
Won't this affect the growth and the health of trees, if anything? There has to be an energy payoff somewhere, and if this "energy tapping" from trees is harmful to the trees, a mass degeneration of various ecological systems is possible. On the other hand, I know everyone is wishing MacGuyver was still running.. ;)
I don't know if you'd get any useful power out of this scheme, but one thing's for sure: you'd better invest in a quality surge protector before you try plugging your gear into a tree.
A nice "do it at home" experiment to get the same results (copper and aluminum voltaic cell) using your own body rather than a tree as the electrolyte.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground. But the electricity is useless because it's unstable and fluctuates.
Sounds a lot like a voltaic pile to me. Something that was made for the first time 200 years ago, only using other materials. The only new thing I can see with this implementation, is that you're using a tree instead of the traditional "little chemist's" lemon. Possibly, the idea is to have the tree regenerate the chemicals. But as they can't say anything about the power of the tappable current, we don't really know (it would be elementary to just raise the voltage - but that would also mean lowering the current...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
This is about tapping investor's wallets, not trees. After all, "green" is HOT! And what could be "greener" than a tree?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Dunno about you, but it looks to me like what we really have here is a glorified, low-level battery. The key is that one pole is aluminum, the other is copper. If they are both the same metal, then you have something.
The energy is coming from the interaction of a mildly acidic tree against the metal in the poles, and over time, the poles will corrode. It will take more energy to keep the poles uncorroded than will be generated by the "tree battery".
In short, a Jr. High School project can do better with a plate of copper, a plate of aluminum, and some paper soaked in lemon juice!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
When the nail completely corrodes, the tree will stop "producing electricity" and this company will have moved on to impressing investors with potato clocks.
MONEY REALLY *DOES* GROW ON TREES! LOOK AT THAT TOMATO! YOU CAN EVEN CUT A TIN CAN WITH IT!
Sorry.
Ahem, I think they have already proven that there is not enough sun energy per square yard of surface area on the earth to meet even a small percentage of our yearly hydrocarbon energy consumption. However, this could be useful for highway or trail markers, maple syrup harvesters (let them know when a bucket is full without requring batteries, etc. I don't see how this could possibly be cheaper than commodity solar cells, however. What's the use. What about the thermolife, which uses thin films to create current from body heat gradients (inside a human body)? That's a revoultion. Potatoheads.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Maybe it's the static created by that many leaves rubbing together. Tree-static.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
It is also important to recognize that the electricity is generated purely by oxidation of the metal sheets driven in the tree. If they are gone, so is the current. The tree does not renew/regrow anything.
I wish we had less bogus science on slashdot. Maybe we need more knowledgeable editors?
Just saw this over at Fark: Plants are producing methane
As for his 2 ---> 12 volts problem... how about using a capacitor and a voltage regulator & step-up converter?
You smooth out the current delivery, step up the voltage... I'm sure the article is leaving out a lot of information. The solution couldn't be that easy
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I prefer wood and gas for energy. Fact is trees are bad for the environment. For example, the amazon forest is responsible for the majority of CO2 emissions on the planet. The only way that Brazil has a chance of meeting its Tokyo accord goals, is by cutting it down further...
"He expects to find investors to help pay for the research needed to figure a way to increase the tree power from less than 2 volts to 12 volts sometime this year" This will probably save millions of dollars and years of research: Flyback or boost switching regulator here's a link: http://www.google.com/search?q=Flyback+OR+boost+sw itching+regulator
It can't do anything about power (watts or amps). For that you probably need a whole forest of trees.
But please put warning signs on those trees:
WARNING: Do not climb on tree. It may electrocute you!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You missed: does this mean all those tree hugging hippies were right?!?
but seriously, if it does pan out, rapidly disappearing big old growth forest regions like Siberia, BC, upper Canada and south America and Africa would have yet another power authority after them to plug in and another hassle to the eco environment that is already precariously endangered if it does. I don't think big dollar old (billion year under ground type) forest decimation oil companies will treat a new resource with any more respect than they do the one they are already draining.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
Maybe it hurts the trees... I don't think the current is so important but the fact of the continous electron's movemente around the tree.
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
It doesn't sound too different from the old lemon battery experiment. Sure, he might be able to generate voltage, but the question is...Where are the AMPS? If he has 12V at .005 milliamps, this tree electricity won't be useful to anyone. I hope not too many investors are buying this guy's line...
-R
What's being tapped here are reckless investors. Personally I'm sticking with cold fusion.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The more I think about it, the more it smells like a scam: Yet another "New Source of Energy" fraud to capture investors.Anyone with a slight clue about chemistry or physics immediately sees that this is just a classic voltaic cell, using the tree and dirt as the electrolyte.
Thus I wonder if this might be a deliberate scam to bilk some investors. At least they weren't claiming a perpetual motion machine.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Nah!
Tapping the trees for current will turn them into Triffids and they'll gobble us all up. Don't bother trying to climb a tree to get away from them, either.
at least they're not trying use them for cellular phone, they'll try to impress their own ring-tones on us
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
An easy way to get 12 volts? Connect six tree-cells in series.
.01 milliamps, it's not going to power a whole lot. Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention amps or watts, and without at least 2 of the 3, there's not really much to say about the potential (pun sort of intended).
Precisely what I was going to say, and I'm sure anyone with a basic knowledge of electricity would say the same thing.
Of course, the real problem probably isn't the voltage so much as the wattage. 12 volts is great, but if it's at about
As Gregory Hines said in Running Scared about hitting the third rail on the subway, "it's not the volts that kill you, it's the amps". A taser hits with 50,000-150,000 volts. The reason you don't burn to a crisp when you get hit by one is the amps are so low.
You want to get the voltage to a usable level, but you also need enough amps to run whatever it is you want to run. Frankly, I doubt a tree can produce enough amps, at least without permanently damaging it, for any serious period of time. The act of being a battery will cause a chemical change in the tree which I have to think wouldn't be a healthy one. Since the tree is alive, it will probably repair the damage, but whether it can repair it fast enough to keep from dying is another question.
Needless to say, I have some serious doubts about this "technology".
Well, he could plant six of the trees in pods pods and align them in a straight row.
Boffins even have a fancy name for this, the call it "series-connecting".
However, what said boffins never understood is that you will have also have to align at 90 to an "earth power ray", otherwise the flow of juice will be too small to be useful.
Also, you will have to make sure they are far enough apart so they don't short out each other when they grow.
I bet this guy company spent a couple of thousand man hours figuring this out experimentally, so they will beat the upstart competition with the giant pumpkins to the market.
Just imagine the millions that will flow in licensing fees if the government starts to put groups of six trees along the strets in the suburbs so you can jumpstart your car on cold winter mornings.
So make sure to sell your property unless it lies on a street that is oriented at 90 to the "earth power rays".
I think there's quite a lot of prior art here, but while we're looking at such stupid ideas let's consider my forthcoming patent for a similar idea using similar electrodes and McDonalds Cheeseburgers. Or potatoes. Let's use copper and aluminum or zinc electrodes and potatoes! They're a renewable resource!
These stupid bastards haven't realised that they're simply getting back the energy that went into refining the metals used for the electrodes. Or perhaps they have, but hope that their investors won't.
I think you nailed it.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Is it just me, or does this sound like it *is* a battery, of particularly primitive variety? I mean, the exact setup is unclear, but....
Copper, another metal (I know aluminum can be used in NiMH batteries), and a possible electrolyte bridge (the tree)?
Sounds like a primitive galvanic cell, to me.
... then the news will have to be posted under software.slashdot.org
This page was a good refresher of my chemistry memory.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
No, not because it's actually going to work. It's obviously just a crappy battery, and taking energy from the metals. It's brilliant because it's not crazy enough to sound completely ridiculous, it has a grain of truth in it, involves everyday simple things so it sounds plausible enough to the typical member of the public with no science background, and it has a "feel good" message. Who doesn't want to believe we can generate power from something as common as a tree?
We should all be so smart to be able to dupe the public into giving us funding for "more research". If only I had less scrupples I'd try something like this myself. Swine morality.. bested me again.
AccountKiller
Well, yes, but how are you going to raise millions in "investment" capital by pointing that out?
"In my 25 years of practicing patent law, I've never seen anything like this."
Ah, well, if a lawyer hasn't seen anything like it it must be a revolution in chemistry.
KFG
When asked what his motivation was for trying to use the trees, MagCap's president responded, "I did it all for the wookies."
Darnit, if they keep tapping the trees for electricity, where am I going to get green mana?
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
in the Netherlands when the trees start turning brown because all their photovoltaic energy is being syphoned off to run computers.
When they kill all the trees what will be their next target? Weeds?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
All they've got to do is use a transformer to step the power up!
Even I knew that.
My blog
...forest fires, ice storms, lightning strikes, and the over all impact on the enviroment? I would love to know how birds and squirrels and ewoks are supposed to live in trees that are being tapped for electricity. This would probably do more damage to the enviroment, AND as far as infrastructure safety goes, it's horrible. Trees are not immortal. I would love to see how British Columbia or Quebec will survive, when someone chucks a lit cigarette out of a car and it sparks a massive forest fire and suddenly no one has power left?
Trees are going to be targets of nature more and more as time progresses since weather is quite obviously becoming more severe. Bigger storms, more snow, more ice, more extremes, essentially, more conditions where forests are at risk of being destroyed. Yes, I know, that can be a benefit, but not when you rely on a forest as an energy resource.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Mod parent up. Without proof of getting enough current from the tree to do anything useful, this idea is pretty silly. Plus, the article says "...increase the tree power from less than 2 volts to 12 volts...", but power is not measured in volts.
http://www.magcap.com/press.php
Looks like it was made with parts from Radioshack. A project enclosure, barrier strip, alligator clips. Although it would make a great science fair project!
MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts with investor funding."
Can I have some of the investor's money if I tell him to wire six trees in series? I'm going to go patent my new "grove" power concept now.
Shhhh! When this clown realises he's just reinvented the lemon/potato battery, your idea will bring on a lemon/potato famine, and then what will I eat with my fish?
1) Cut tree down
2) Burn tree to create steam
3) Use steam to create electricity
4) Profit!
Or, he chopped down the trees and burned them to create steam. This steam turned a turbine, turning a magnet to induce electricity.
Brilliant!
Have any of you remember Tenchi Muyo? They use tree to powering a ship or something like that..
hmm...
He has indeed made a battery, and has made a cunning choice in using an aluminium nail because of its electrode potential. It works like this:
:v)
Copper(II) electrode potential: 0.337V
Aluminium electrode potential: -1.662V
(Source http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0157_corr/)
String them together in a condictive electrolyte (tree sap & humic acid in the soil will do) to get a cell with 1.999V potential - magically matching his 2.0V
Of course, his aluminium nail is corroding and will need replacing - which is where the energy comes from.
You can't connect the trees in series to increase the voltage because they share a common ground.
Vik
First of all... Increasing voltage has a trivial, known solution. Starting with DC makes it a bit harder, but still a well-understood problem with a wide array of solutions to choose from. Since none of the sources of information on this company (and I looked into this one before it hit Slashdot) mention either wattage or ampereage, I have to suspect the real problem involves not volts, but watts. Yes, magically increasing voltage would increase watts via "W=V*A", but not if you do so via a voltage conversion rather than a "real" increase in output.
Second... An aluminum nail and a copper pipe, both embedded in a slightly corrosive fluid... Hmm, where have I heard something like this before? Oh yeah, the basic galvanic battery. Sorry MagCap, the Babylonians beat you to the punch on this one.
Finally... Do trees particularly like having a few thousand aluminum nails driven into them? Not making a flakey "tree rights" argument, but rather, does using tree sap as a battery electrolyte really count as sustainable, or will it just kill the tree? Not to mention that both aluminum and copper salts tend to have deleterious effects on many organisms native to this planet.
In summary - Listen to the skeptics on this one. I'll tolerate the zero-point folks before I'll let some MBA try to sell me a massively overblown version of the "potato clock".
Step 1: Cut down said tree
Step 2: Chop into firewood sized chunks
Step 3: Burn chunks obtained from (2)
Step 4: Harness heat from (3) boil water
Step 5: Use steam generated in (4) to turn steam turbine generator
Step 5: ???
Step 6: Electricity!!!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
They filed for a PATENT on this? Sticking a nail in a tree and a pipe in the ground? Aren't we a bit late for a patent on a voltaic pile? It's exactly the same thing as using a lemon or potato as a battery. I can get much better results from a stack of zinc and copper plates, some napkins, and a bunch of vinegar.
Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, is quoted as saying, "There's a fundamental law of physics. The energy has to come from somewhere."
Of course it does, Jim. The energy comes from the oxidation of the two metals. Leave that puppy plugged into the tree long enough, and your aluminum nail and copper pipe will oxidize away to nothing while the electricity--all whopping 2 volts of it--happily flows through the electrolyte (tree and dirt).
Apparently Jim has never made a potato clock in middle school science class. C'mon, man, even the Professor on Gilligan's Island managed to make a radio out of a couple of coconuts! And he couldn't even repair a hole in a boat!
I'd like to know who these investors are, though. I'd let to let them know about a novel new way to generate electricity with a fur coat and a balloon that I've developed.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
because they sound stupid. I had an ideal for putting up "speed bumps" that generated electricity when cars went over them. I e-mailed a big name in the alternative energy field, who was mentioned in a Slashdot article, and he laughed and said it would be "a good joke to tell at a party." And six to eight months later -- with serveral other people telling it was a dumb idea -- I open up Slashdot and see an article from a guy in England who has made something almost identical to my idea and has 200 cities wanting to buy his device. That just goes to show you what the big "experts" know. My good party joke was going to make some guy a ton of money. Of course, I was a little let down to see that someone had beat me to it, but that's life, I guess. And even though I researched and could find nobody working on the invention, that guy had been working on it for 11 years.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Now, instead of digging oil out of the barren desert we can destroy our forests to give us electricity. Progress!
Look at the wonderful magic box. Good grief, talk about a cheesy prop for a scam: A box, alligator clips on wires and four switches!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Unfortunatly this is likely to have a very high internal resistance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_resistance) preventing you from drawing any useful power from the battery (tree).
Oh and over time it would probably kill the tree too.
You want stable, filtered 12 volts from it? Go to Maxim, get yourself an inductor-based regulated DC-DC converter chip, some decent sized filter capacitors on both sides, and you're set. But you're still better off with lemons. And I'm no biochemist, but I'm guessing the tree's not going to like having its sap chemistry messed with, either. At the very least, I imagine you'd deplete the electrolyte around the aluminum electrode and it'd stop working. Maybe there's enough flow in there to keep the circuit going, but again, it's going to be doing something funky to the tree if there's any significant chemical process going on.
And then there's the guy's initial assumption - that because lighting can go from the ground to the sky (sort of), there must be some sort of energy in the earth. Maybe if the Kansas Board of Education has their way, we can ALL achieve this level of scientific insight someday!
Sorry, couldn't help myself...
True - that has to be the funniest line in the article. Of course, the only reason he hasn't seen anything like it is because nobody in the entire patent system is actually capable of reading - even their numeracy skills are barely sufficient to count the non-sequential $20 notes in that brown paper bag...
Each tree would have to be in its own pot, otherwise, the battery cells (trees) would short themselves out. Anyway, the energy you get comes from the aluminum going into solution. To make the aluminum you use electricity. You would get less energy back from the trees. Not exactly perpetual motion.
This reminds me a bit of cold fusion. There's something happening but maybe not what the inventors think.
>An easy way to get 12 volts? Connect six tree-cells in series.
Well, if all the trees are in the ground, then they're parallel right? To get a series connection only the first tree can be in the ground, the other five have to be in isolated pots. The easy way of doing that is to put them in when they're still small but then you have to wait a long time. The other way is of course quicker but involves heavy machinery.
is that what they call 'green' power?
Your good party joke was stupid. And if you don't know why, you are stupider than we thought.
The speed bump 'electrical generation' simply uses an inefficient combustion engine to convert gasoline into electricity. A regular honda generator would be ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more efficient than the 'speed bump' electrical generator, which makes "free" electricity by wasting gas.
The speed bumps amount to a net tax on everyone driving a car, which may be good or bad, but it ought to be advertised as a tax, not as "free energy".
Perhaps we could tie a generator to you, and you could drag it around so we can have free energy. After all, you won't mind carrying/pulling an extra 100kg everywhere you go? And since you just produce human byproducts and eat carrots, it's "green".
Now take your party jokes and go somewhere else.
Taco just addressed the entire /. audience yesterday and assured us Slashdot isn't going to hell. So how many of these stupid articles on pseudo-science do we have to endure before he admits Something Must Be Done?
It's enough to make me go do my job for a while.
Isn't this the same technology that was used in The Matrix to power the machine city? What with cars driving themselves across the desert, flying around by themselves with missles on board, and now technology to get power from trees and possibly other biological sources just how close are we to building a terminator?
Yes your chemistry sounds about right, as the aluminum corrodes you get a current. However this can't be too good for the plant. Besides the obvious bit about a big spike being nailed in, aluminum ions are toxic to plants. As this thing makes "power" (which in it self is questionable due to the energy cost of refining aluminum) it poisons the tree. I am sure since IAPMB (I am a Plant Molecular Biologist) that the plant can tolerate a certain amount of aluminum, however quite a lot can come from acid soils and the environment. I am doubtful that any real amount of "power" can be harvested this way without killing (or severely stunting) the trees. In short, what the heck is the point, sure you can make a potato battery out of a tree. However like the potato clock, you don't expect the potato to survive long term as a living battery.
... This must be forest BDSM.
Talk about the rape of the forests
Well, after a bit of hunting around on the net, I learned that they plan to massively upgrade the power output by placing a zinc-plated nail into a Lemon tree . Specifically, each and every lemon on the tree, then installing a large copper pipe connected to the ground next to the tree.
One has enough poetential energy to fund the printing of a 3-page business plan and investor "opportuninty" with the company, per tree! With enough trees, this guy really could get rich.
Personally, I'm going create a side business of selling zinc-saturated lemons as a dietary supplement in the US.
I'd tap 'dat ash.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
You will get more energy out of burning the tree than you will using this old potato clock idea. This article at best is a troll. Nothing more.
You can't wire trees in series. They are grounded.
I feel like I've seen this before somewhere.. some company figures out a way to suck the energy out of living things and then sells it as plentiful cheap power to humanity.
But woe befalls them all when it is determined what damage this causes the planet, and thus humanity.
Oh Cu-lau-do, please save us!
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Burning the tree will certainly kill it. This may not. The tree draws power from the sun and nutrients from the earth that it uses to repair itself. Rainwater will also correct the PH in the soil. Depending on the wattage he can pull out of his potato clock it could work.
Hmm.
But... could you breed trees that could repair the damage and enhance the effect?
That might be an inexpensive form of solar energy.
I mean we breed dogs to all kinds of extremes- couldn't we breed a short-lived (say 20 year generation) tree to enhance this effect and not only survive but thrive on the negatives.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Is this the Tree Matrix where we provide soothing images of fast jungles while they are getting drained?
How do you measure energy in volts? Why not in bytes, pascals, or miles?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"it's going to be doing something funky to the tree if there's any significant chemical process going on."
No doubt and the soil too. The question is whether the tree can repair itself and rainwater renourish the soil rapidly enough to compensate. Or at least do a good enough job that it takes a substantial length of time to lose the fight. Trees are a renewable resource after all.
The type of tree and the trees sap could have an impact in this as well. Just because his way of tapping the energy is simple does not mean that it is an altogether bad idea or useless. There has to be enough current to be useful, but one also must remember that there is no shortage of trees in the world.
Are the editors trying to lose readership? Scams and pseudoscience are hitting the front page so often now I no longer associate Slashdot with Nerdy smart people, but instead with slack jawed mouth breathers.
I'm using Digg.com more and more because at least I can vote down the dumbass stories.
Sometimes I crack myself up.
TMM, knock it off with the AC. We know that you're the one putting up the "defense of TMM" posts. This is one of the reasons why you're pissing off a lot of people. My excuse for AC? Why, to keep my karma safe from your legions of followers with mod points who wish to engage in their typical censorship of any not-favorable-to-TMM posts.
Google for "potato battery", you'll find plenty like this.
;-)
I remember there was a story about some guys demoing their tiny microcontroller chip (or single-chip webserver, or something) running it off a "potato battery" to show how little power is required.
I guess I should start teaching physics to VCs, charging $300/hour -- will save them a lot in the long run...
Paul B.
Just not for very long.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
I guess it might be useful in a survival kit ... it would be better than packing batteries in the sense it could presumably have a longer life.
"There's a fundamental law of physics," he said. "The energy has to come from somewhere." The Sun! Obviously. What a painfully ignorant way to end a great article. True or not, I like the idea of trees as advanced photoreactors. They've certainly had a long time to perfect what they do. - Daedius
This has to be the funniest phrase in the article: "...questioned the potential of MagCap's plans..."
Potential = Voltage
If you don't get it, go open your physics book.
Wadle became interested in the concept while studying lightning coming from the ground, "which led him to believe that there's some type of power emanating from earth, which led him to trees,"
to paraphrase "I done seen them pitchers where lightnin comes up from the ground. So I reckon thar must be 'lectricity in the earth, and mebbe it's them trees what are makin it"
The guy is clearly a kook and idiot and anyone who invests deserves what they get.
So burn one twig from the tree every few days. You'll still probably get more energy, and that is the type of damage the tree can probably deal with.
Will it run SAP?
So plant more trees. I seriously doubt that he will ever get enough amps out of such a setup to do more than power a small LCD clock. Would be better use of time and effort to improve solar power if you want a renewable power source or to just burn the trees to make room for the power windmills and solar panels.
Now when they spike trees, they can collect energy as well!
BTW, quoting volts is useless. You need to quote power numbers to determine how much energy can be extracted.
Even if a KV was produced, if only a pA of current flows into your load, that's not a whole lot of energy.
Vote for Pedro
Ranger Smith: Did you know that the first MagCap was designed to be a perfect tree world? Where none withered, where every one would be sappy. It was a disaster. No tree would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.
from their official site http://www.magcap.com/press.php - they can power one whopping LED with the circuit (although how many taps they are using is unclear)
But the circuit you made does NOT draw power from the sun, this is just a battery driven by a chemical reaction between the copper and aluminum spikes.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Yeah but trees serve another function. THEY GENERATE OXYGEN. Your solar panels actually pollute the earth when constructed and your windmills take up space. Both your solar panels and windmills require too much space to succeed as a longterm replacement for fossil fuels. In the meantime lets keep looking for VIABLE renewable energy sources.
...nobody can see the forest for the Vs. 2volts can be transformed into bigger amps and lower voltage, and by wiring a grove or orchard, enough power might be available to provide usable amperage and voltage. But ya know, you can do the same thing by putting dissimilar metals into the ocean, and not ever worry about stunting its growth.
"there is no shortage of trees in the world."
You sure about that?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I think the author's intent was to replace EXISTING speed bumps out there with ones that reclaim some of the energy.
Hmmm. Even if each tree only produces a 1/100th of an amp, what if they do this to hundreds of thousands of trees? would that not produce enough power to justify the expenditure?
Well, he could increase the potential from 2 volts to 12 volts by putting them in series. I think he probably has a longer way to go than he knows.
if IIRC U(V) and I(A) ..., a lot of questions arise. I wonder if a tree is a true electrolyte.
... ...
are linear connnected to each other so connecting thousands of this trees
I'm not stating they aren't simply making a battery of this. Which still fiddles my
mind
Because most electrolyt's i've known are liquid!, H2S04, HCL, NACL+H2O, or any other
salt in water for all i care.
but to get to the point connecting thousands of these trees which will generate
this is an example, 10.000 of Volts and 0.001 mA would still let us downscale the voltage
a 1000 times for explanatory purposes and say it's 100 % perfect. -->
it would boost the I, dont know how the fuck you call I(A) but in our language it is
rougly translated as the strenght of the current, that besides; it would in the
equation that follows boost this signal 1000 times making 1 A!.
if IIRC R=U/I, P(wattage)=U.I,
I'm truely no more sure about this, but i do recall the fact that U and I had a
linear relationship: if U went down I went up,
yes, the guy is describing a lemon battery, but this reminds me of a rather cool idea that may actually be practical one day with nano-tech or something. Photosynthesis actually work by generating electrons. The electrons are used to create chemical energy. Wouldn't it be cool to tap into the electron transport chain and syphon them off to a power point at the base of the tree?
As getting the electrons into tiny-tiny wires that collect on one spot is likely to be a tall order, it's probably easier to "burn" the tree's sap similar to a parasitic plant. Also, as most natural systems live pretty close to the edge, I'm not sure just how much energy you could syphon off without harming the tree.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Tap the trees during thunderstorms and you can get 1.21 GigaWatts!!
It seems that the editors like posting stories about comical IPO's and "scientific discoveries" that come from complete crackpots.
Is it that they're still pining for the late 90s and the days where madly scribbling down any kind of junk on a napkin, and acting like it's going to change the world would net you 100 million bucks to spend on party favours on New Year's day? Or is it that they like to cling to the belief that all the low-hanging fruit for solving the world's pressing problems hasn't already been picked?
This story shouldn't be marked with "Energy" and "Science", because it involves neither, except perhaps as a 3rd grade science project.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
If you want a viable energy source then lets build more nuclear plants. Problem solved. Getting power from trees as described is nothing more than a troll article. There should be some way to flag articles as such.
that was hilarious. Split my sides laughing.
Bah. Everybody knows 640k trees is all the world really needs...
Help us build a better map!
I think the point is that the vehicles will be driving regardless of the existance of said speed bumps. So, if you place the speed bumps where the vehicles will be anyway (especially when you replace existing speed bumps) with the electric generating variety, the amount of energy leeched from the vehicle is negligible. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't notice a net change in the fuel economy of my car when I run over speed bumps or potholes in the road. it's not like I'm towing a schoolbus with a honda or anything.
Ok, so this guy had a dumb idea. How about a slightly smarter one? Electricity from trees via sap powered fuel cell.
Piffle! We Druids have been deriving power from trees for the
past couple of millenia.
One has to wonder where all these investors come from.
There's a sucker born every minute.
One of the worst puns ever
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
...a trophy for "geekiest comment of the month". Congratulations!
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Zinc Nail and copper pipe?
two dissimilar metals in an electrolyte.
Congratulations, you've invented a battery!
unfortunatly, the aluminum spike will degrade, and it cannot repair itself (this is realy where the power comes from also, not the tree)
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
But you'll need root on every tree to get power, right?
I seriously doubt that you could replace a power-plant with a forest, just not going to happen.
What you might have is an extremely cheap power supply for wireless webcams in the forest. Maybe not even enough power for this, but...
Imagine a square mile of forest. In a hundred of the trees (evenly distributed) you shoot a spike with a CPU/transmitter on it and then shoot a second spike into the ground.
These CPUs could track tagged animals exact locations with almost no power or investment.
How about a tiny, free mesh network that connects people who live far apart? Even if each transmitter could only reach a hundred feet, at a price of tens of dollars a piece you could saturate an area with 'em.
100% wireless coverage in a city, even in the middle of large parks?
I think the advantage here would be the ability to create devices without batteries (yet with reliable 24hr power) that could be created cheaply enough to spam across a large area.
According to the faq and press release on the home page for the company they do talk wattage. They essentially wire multiple taps into a capacitor circut that cleans the power a bit and ups the voltage by swapping the capcitors from parrallel for collection to series for pulsing when full.
They think they can scale the basic idea to 12 volts and 1 amp. So 12 watts of energy.
Interesting to note the faq clearly states this is not a galvanic reaction. And there is no destructive anode/electrode errosion. There seems to be no practical limit to the number of taps per tree (other than damaging the tree itself) and that the tree size dosn't make any difference. Also the power harnessed goes up during winter.
In the end it looks like it is tapping into a store of energy held universally in the ground by using the tree spike as a positive pole while the ground spike is the negative.
What I don't get is... this seems to mean it is something independent of the trees and it seems you could create an more efficient element for tapping the energy. All in all this sounds a lot like the old work of Tesla. He found that that the ground did indeed carry a charge along with the atmosphere. Heck lightning itself is indeed proof enough of the atmosphere... same for ground lightning with respects to the ground. So this isn't really all that crazy. Cloud based lightning is a difficult potential energy source to tap. However ground lightning should result from charge potentials in the gound. If you can find a way to tap that potential and release it in a measured manner you could then tap lightning as a basic source of energy. Since those potentials are driven by forces of nature it is essentially limitless.... though I suppose there is the potential to tap the energy at a higher rate than it is stored.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
What about OGG?
OGG like trees too!
Sure, thats believable.
Every Fireman I've ever seen carries a volt meter with a 40,000 volt range with them all the time.
I'm sure that Firemen just never know when they'll need to measure the electrical potiential of some guys clothing after a fire.
Can you say HOAX?
I can.
Nobody lives better than ewoks. They do need electricty because they have reached the ultimate state of ewokness, which other species can only imitate, but never match.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The List:
There is a natural voltage gradient of hundreds to thousands of volts per meter in the atmosphere everywhere. Unfortunatly it's not usable because of the natural resistance. A tree will (of course) reflect less than that because of it's natural conductivity.
Oh, what a neat idea!
The article says there is voltage, but nothing on current. How much current is drawn across 2V? Power = current * voltage. You could have 1000 V, but if the current is about a nano-amp, you won't have enough to run a radio.
... and it has an MP3 player attached to it, does it make a sound?
it's not the volts that kill you, it's the amps
that statement is commonly quoted but highly misleading. the important factors are tissue current, duration, route through the body (heart is generally nasty) and frequency.
tissue current is determined by applied voltage and resistance of the path.
static shocks have a very high voltage and hence initially a very high tissue current but since you are essentially draining a very low value capacitor that voltage and current tails off extremely quickly. I belive the shocks from tazers and the like are probablly similar but with more capacitance behind them so they actually incapacitage rather than just shock.
shocks off any power system mean you get the full transmission voltage accross you for a potentially LONG time (especially if there is no earth fault detection system in place) and so have a tendancy to be responsible for deaths in quite a lot of cases. the rated current of the transmission line is largely unimportant.
things like phone lines although they can reach quite nasty voltages when ringing are a high impedance source so once any parasitic capacitance is discharced the voltage and tissue current will drop down to something thats very unlikely to injure.
DC is particuarlly nasty because it can clamp you to the transmission line. RF can also be very nasty as it can apparantely do severe tissue damage without any warning.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's funny to see 300 people point out that this guy has re-invented the potato/lemon battery, and at the tail end of the story someone tries defending the process, by quoting the FAQ:
.. well, all I see is talk about voltage, but we'll leave the advanced (ie: grade 11) physics out of this for now. We can safely stick to elementary school science for this. Go make a potato battery using the smallest potato you can find, and copper and aluminum electrodes. Now go make one using the biggest potato you can find. Notice that the voltage you can get from that is exactly the same!
Q: Is the voltage potential between an electrode inserted in the tree and one grounded both having different electro-potential characteristics due to electro-chemical reactions e.g. Galvanic batteries?
A: In a Galvanic reaction there is metal to metal contact. Henceforth the word "galvanized". Validation and voltage measurement does not involve metal to metal contact.
See, um, I'm no physicist, but I do know that in a galvanic cell, the metals most definitely do NOT touch each other. There is no metal-to-metal contact. None. The metal electrodes only interact through an electrolytic medium which carries ions between the two of them.
Just for fun, let's look at the rest of this answer:
In addition, a chemical reaction requires a very elevated or very low PH level in order to create this alkaline or acidic condition.
No, chemical reactions can take place at literally any pH. Try again.
A chemical reaction requires hours if not days to manifest.
Try telling that to someone who works with high explosives. Or, if you don't believe me, go to your kitchen and add some vinegar to some baking soda. It won't take hours to react, but see for yourself if you're unsure.
Anyway, the fact that the size of the trees has no effect on the amount of power
Dude, you've been hoodwinked. The FAQ is entirely, completely, 100% wrong on the most basic fact of how batteries, and for that matter, chemisty works.
Mods, you've been had as well.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Franklin became interested in the concept while studying lightning coming from the sky, "which led him to believe that there was some type of power emanating from the clouds."
... this is con artistry, or at best fringe science. Combination of both, probably.
Please
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If he makes money, it'll more likely be from selling kits or plans on infomercials than from making electricity. After seeing L.E.D.s powered from small batteries sold as teeth whiteners and pain killers, its clear some people can be fooled into buying just about anything. But in the spirit of developing his idea...
No point wasting good nails and trees. Just find a place where there are copper water pipes buried, use that as one connection, then bury beer cans with wires attached nearby. Teach your dog (and maybe whoever drank the beer?) to pee there.
Free power, as in free beer?
When your friends are too drunk to go out and pee, have them sitting naked on metal plates, with peltier-junction arrays between the plates and massive solid iron cylinders going down into the ground as heatsinks. Get some electricity from the heat flow. Being overweight can be an ass-set.
Maybe get enough power to run a non-backlit LCD tv!
Be original when stepping up the voltage...
A DC-DC up converter with an inductor, power-F.E.T., schottky diode, capacitor and some control electronics is so high tech. I say let's bring back the dynamotor!
It's more fun than putting trees in pots so they could be hooked in series.
Wadle became interested in the concept while studying lightning coming from the ground, "which led him to believe that there's some type of power emanating from earth, which led him to trees," Lagadinos said.
The fact that he didn't start from an actual theory as to why there would be a voltage differential between a tree and the ground says that he's full of crap. "Lightning comes from the ground - therefore there must be power eminating from the ground!" How about the explanation that's been accepted for hundreds of years, which is the power is generated by the *clouds*?
Maybe he never took a middleschool science class.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
My dad always said, "Stop wasting power; it does *not* grow on trees!"
Well, I can show him up now.
Table-ized A.I.
Wouldn't this also contamanate the tree with those metals?
The US patent office has given a patent for a ...
...
wait for it
battery.
My oh my, where do you get your patent examiners from?
threadeds blog
So, I've developed a way to extract limitless amounts of energy from potatos: http://www.ehow.com/how_18637_make-potato-clock.ht ml. It appears to follow broadly similar principles to these people 'tree energy'. Where's my venture capital money?
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
wouldn't that make treehugging dangerous?
Here's another suggestion for extracting energy - or at least that's my hypothesis (not to be confused with THEORY, are you ID proponents listening?):
Due to lightenings etc, the ground in different areas hold an electrical potential that is different for different areas. This means that if we ram a metal rod into the ground in, say Texas and another in Massachusetts and connect them with an insulated cable, a current will flow in the cable. Am I right? And why not?
A cell's voltage depends entirely on the chemical composition of its electrodes and electrolyte. I highly doubt he's going to find new electrode materials that will increase the voltage that much. Sounds like he's just a quack preying on ignorant investors.
First...
This should not be patentable, please tell me there are
staff there that do undestand the principles of at least
simple electrochemistry. First... you take copper (+), you
drive that into moist soil, then take aluminum (-)or zinc (-), drive that into the ground, take your voltmeter and measure the potential.
This is all he did. No patent should be granted here.
I think this guy should of paid attention in High School.
Power plant !
When fiction hits reality, dreams have no air-bag.
...more tree-huggers found mysteriously electrocuted. Film at 11.
Does this make the Goatse man a walking power plant?
you missed one
Seriously, is getting energy from trees news? Maybe someone should tell this sap that wood burns.
Retcon.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"MagCap"? Is it April 1st already?
Several folks have already mentioned the concept that voltage without current is useless...example being the 35kv static shock you get when you scrub your shoes on carpet on a dry day and touch a doorknob. That's thirty-five thousand volts, but since the current is so miniscule, all it gives you is a bit of a burn where the arc touches your skin and, if you're really lucky, a slight jerk in the muscles surrounding the discharge point.
.8in circumference, or 0.8 square inches, the internal resistance of this battery (which, as has been pointed out by the parent, is all this "amazing discovery" is), is bound to be huge. Which, at two volts, of course means infinitesimal current.
Anyway, I digress. Point being, if you have a good bit of earth and quite a bit of tree between the contact points, and a contact area inside the tree of...1 inch depth times (let's be generous--an 1/4th-inch-diameter nail) roughly
Definitely in the "nothing to see here" category.
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
...I have made the earth-shaking discovery that I can also power a digital clock by shoving a copper and a zinc spike into a lemon!
http://undecidedgames.blogspot.com
Stick a nail in a tree and anotherone in the ground and you will get 2 volts more otr less ... It's called a tree battery. Duh! Put 6 of them in parallel and you'll get 12 volts. :)