Link to the paper: dl.acm.org/doi... Don't forget to check out my companion channels TnT Omnibus here / @tntomnibus and TnT Talk Time found here / @tnttalktime
My favorite way to spend a Sunday after noon is going down a random rabbit hole about something I never even knew existed before I got a notification about one of your videos
I'm surprised how YT is great at showing me this material. I'm building a company that addresses farmer's needs and this is something that I can use on my local market. Thank you a lot.
@@tekknorat yes. If you have, say 10mV coming out of each, which can be stacked like an EV battery for instance, then it'll take 600 in series (probably) to make 12v. Current is another question, but capacitors yo.
This channel is amazing. There's truly nothing else quite like it on RU-vid. Always informative and highly topical to those wanting to believe in new or re-imagined ideas about making the world a better place.
Microbial fuel cells almost reminds me of that Rick and Morty episode where Rick's car breaks down and it is revealed that his car's battery is literally a tiny world inhabited by tiny beings jumping on a pressure pad that produces electricity. They're literally converting their world into energy the energy required to jump up and down, which itself powers a car. Long story short, his car battery stopped working because they stopped needing to jump on their pads. So if your fuel cell stops working, either your microbes died in an unsustainable environment, or they found something more worthwhile to do.
Interestingly enough you can actually buy a microbial fuel cell kit that comes with a little LED that will blink. I also experimented with this as well but I did not realize that the mesh I bought which I thought was stainless steel from the dollar store was actually plastic coated and so I didn't get all of the amperage I should have got, however I was able to get a steady current flow of 10-20 microamps regardless. With a proper mesh you can actually get quite a lot more current out of this. What I'm somewhat interested in doing with this concept is laying down a layer of conductive mesh then covering that with topsoil then putting down another conductive mesh then covering that with a little bit more topsoil and then putting plants on top of it. Once the plants are on top of it and they just are surviving the plants actually create sugars and feed the bacteria in the soil and so you can actually just straight up like use the plants in the Sun as like a super indirect microbial solar powered fuel cell.
Of course, the farmers could just use the technology I've been working on to send power thru the soil from a solar bank and operate all their sensors without batteries (the batteries sitting on the side of the field with the solar panels). I call it "Through the Soil Long Range Wireless Power transfer" - not the most clever of names I know, (my group recently published it in IEEE transactions on industrial electronics 😊).
I have a hypothesis similar to yours, and you might think the same, that the ancient civilisations used mother nature her very self to transmit information and energy..for example, using trees to act act as wireless transmitters of information and, like you say, the ground to transmit energy through soil and mycelium etc...that's why I believe there's not much evidence of manufactured parts from the ancient times as i beloved they were advanced enough to utilise and control nature for their uses.
There is literally an electric potential everywhere! It would be great if our governance of corporate investiture “felt” the same, then carbon capture would be a cinch.
Carbon wouldnt need to be captured if they allowed other technologies, but those arent profitable. They will never give up profit so those carbon taxes are just to control people and money grab.
That occurred to me as well. And biogas units are easy to make. It also seems like you might get better electricity production from the liquid rather than the dirt- better contact and such (i don't know, but that seems plausible)
Every video of yours that I've watched sends me deep down a rabbit hole, but the truly astounding thing is that you produce these faster than I can watch them! That in itself is pretty mind-blowing. I wish a had a fraction of your energy and intelligence!
@MickEMaus3000 I know it's only minute, but surely you can scale up and treat them like batteries and put them in series/parallel etc and perhaps find a way to use a transformer to step up the amperage
Excellent sir! You have my respect and , "Here's a feather. " no one has more knowledge and wisdom than Mother Earth. We have a dire need for more creative souls that care about humanity and its survival.
Hello Robert, I love your show. Could you do a series on essential gadgets for survival ideally mechanical so no electricity required, no batteries. I'm thinking of displaced families on the move like in Palestine at the moment. Compass would be useful. Maybe you could use batteries but very simple setups with bare bones things available
Ive read a few things in my lifetime on Nikola Tesla making electricity just from using the soil but the idea wasn't profitable and therefore buried. Not sure if true or not but im glad to see new minds coming to a similar creation that's tangible.
Thanks for featuring out work! If you go to Appendix A2 in the paper, you can find instructions to building our v3.1 design which is entirely 3D printed and requires no waterjet or metal parts :)
So...compost would probably be more rewarding than yard soil...it is used for heating now,mixed with sawdust..would harvesting the electrons curb the heat return or is it a separate crop...?
This is exciting news! I researched this phenomenon back in the early 2000s using a Joe Cell. I thought my results were exciting, but I thought it would not be scalable technology, so I stopped my research. I moved on to ortho-hygrogen experiments.
@@dirtdiggity1714 Why... because modern farming is becoming ever more expensive and is still a ton of work. Any small short cut in time or expenses would help. Im a small scale farmer but I can see applications like this could help. Its not unlike methane produced by cattle farms being captured and used to heat buildings near the barns, though at this point its rare and experimental. Even compost on large scales produces masses of heat that could be harnessed and used to be in the past with cold frames in gardens producing heat early in spring to get crops off to an earlier start. There is much wisdom in the past.
Is there scope for a constant feed system? I mean could it be used in conjunction with a compost heap where microbial activity is naturally higher and can be refuelled by adding compostables at the top and soil being deposited below by some type of clever valve system.
Fascinating stuff. Is the energy coming completely from microbes, though? You can get a 0.5-1V or so by sticking a cathode and anode into dry sand where you wouldn't expect much of a microbiome.
This reminds me of the theory that the ancient Egyptians uses decaying animal corpses as batteries. They would close them in a granite coffin, and theorectically, the pressure from the decaying matter would create an electrical charge for a long time. I'm no phsycist, so my understanding is quite low. Is this possible? The process seems similar to what you are describing
Would adding molasses to the microbial cell increase longevity or output? Including sugar (food) for the microbes is commonly done in vermiculture tea to increase shelf life.
Mrs Richards: "I paid for a room with a view !" Basil: (pointing to the lovely view) "That is Torquay, Madam ." Mrs Richards: "It's not good enough!" Basil: "May I ask what you were expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window ? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically past?..." Mrs Richards: "Don't be silly! I expect to be able to see the sea!" Basil: "You can see the sea, it's over there between the land and the sky." Mrs Richards: "I'm not satisfied. But I shall stay. But I expect a reduction." Basil: "Why?! Because Krakatoa's not erupting at the moment ?"
Consider the possibility of using wires buried in the garden exploiting the flow of carbonium ions to the surface. The whole garden would constitute a very large cell.
Oddly enough, I have access to a water jet cutter at a local maker group. I've been looking at things like this to create a self powered hydro/aquaponic set up, with the soil powering some of the lights for the plants and using glass and salt water capacitors to trickle store generation during in the day. Its mostly in my head and on paper at this point, but this looks like a piece of the puzzle I can work with 🎉😊 Not seeing the links in the description. Is the assembly video on RU-vid or their website?
I just posted where you can find the paper and download the design files for printing but Rob may be using a 3rd party filter that censors lots of false -positives in the comments.
May someday fiends dont control what is an acceptable means of energy production. I hope one day all forms of energy production are available & accessable. Perhaps like youre showing. We can even power our needs by the dirt itself.
Would these power a cell phone? Would be cute to put on the wall as a modern tethered phone powered by an indoor garden tower . Also have thought tucking som solar charging components and a cellphone along with laptop or tablet into an EMP sealed box(s) along with batteries . but batteries would slowly discharge so your still stuck. But enough components to whip soil batteries together could at least get you going till you get some solar stuff up for more heavy charging.
The main question is : what is the voltage & amperage of this battery? There are plenty of innovative power source inventions, but unfortunately most of them can't even light up an LED light bulb.
I guess the only thing to worry about long-term is that it doesn't mutate or get a virus. Diversity of used microbes would be a wise precaution to limit chances of colonies going 'bad'. Microbes aren't immune to mutation (evolution) and some have an alarming mutation rate purely due to their increased reproduction rate. The soil itself could conceivably be exhausted of nutrients, but that would indeed take "forever" as it's a closed system and nothing truly gets converted into unbreakable compounds so the "fuel" doesn't deplete. Maybe a mineral supplement and reshuffling of the contents could briefly overclock the battery. Some microbes inherently follow electrical potentials, so it's self-starting too. This thing is so interesting, I can't stop thinking about using it.
How many watts does it produce on average? I wonder how long it would take to recharge a cellphone, if that's possible. I'm not finding information on this.
Came here for the amp and voltage but left sad😢. I perused the paper, and maybe I missed something but I cant find anything tangible. Anybody else find anything or build it?
@@billyen33I don't know how not to be negative after seeing the results. I see it now Millivolts, and microwatts/microamps. So this will not scale, and the resistance in wires would keep this out of 99.999% of projects. Because of the lack of scale a .99c super capacitor and a .99c solar cell would fit the same niche. Heck if no light put a thick plate of magnesium and graphite in the soil and it will last for years and give off up to 1.2-1.5v and milliamps for years with only a slight bit of moisture. Put them in a series of planter pots and you can have a 12v battery if you want(but only milliamps). I do appreciate that they publicized it without a paywall though. I also hope that they find a break-through.
For a low power, long term application, ouldnt those little nickel based nuclear batteries be a better option? This is definitely cool, but seems a bit impractical.
From the paper it produces about 10uW which is ... really a very, very tiny amount of power. Probably not really worth it considering the size of the device. Even for a small sensor. Or to put it another way, the sensor something like this would power can be smaller than your thumbnail, and the power source is massive by comparison.
the statement that it "runs forever" is misleading. MFCs require a continuous supply of organic matter in the soil to function. Over time, the efficiency can decrease due to factors like the depletion of organic matter or changes in the microbial community.
