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.'"

Comments

Best part of the article

[karvind]

"There's a fundamental law of physics," he said. "The energy has to come from somewhere."

You bet !!

Patent what?

[Caesious]

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.

A battery, maybe?

[fgodfrey]

I'm wondering if this voltage isn't the result of simple electrolysis. He's using two different metals and a living tree, unlike a piece of furniture, is full of water. Iron and copper in a salt water bath will form a battery. Will aluminum? That seems the most likely explanation.

This page was a good refresher of my chemistry memory.

As a wise man once said..

[StikyPad]

I'd tap 'dat ash.