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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.'"
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~ |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?
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
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?
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
...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?
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.
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/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.
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
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, 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
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".
Sorry, couldn't help myself...
is that what they call 'green' power?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.