Many people don’t know this, but the ground beneath you contains an electrical charge; albeit an extremely weak one. Scientists have known for quite some time that an electrical charge could be harvested from the metabolic processes of bacteria living in soil, however, the effort it took to demonstrate the efficacy and/or practicality of this charge was thought to be to great and not worth the time to pursue.
The Brown Battery
For those of us, including scientists, who have the luxury of flipping a switch or plugging into an outlet for our electricity, the idea of squeezing tiny amounts of electricity out of dirt may indeed seem like a waste of time. But for the millions of people in the world that have absolutely no access to any form of electricity, the idea may not sound like such a bad one. Luckily for these people, a team of researchers called Lebone at Harvard felt the same way and have developed the microbial fuel cell (MFC); a ‘battery’ that runs on dirt.
The MFC is the epitome of simplicity combined with inexpensive common materials. It consists of a 5-gallon bucket with graphite-cloth anode, a chicken-wire cathode, manure-rich mud for fuel, a layer of sand to act as an ion barrier and salt water as an electrolyte—all attached to an electronic power-management board.
From Popular Mechanics:
In June 2009, team members traveled to Namibia to launch a pilot program featuring 100 MFCs made from small canvas bags that can be linked for increased voltage. The bags are filled with dirt and buried. When watered to keep the microbes munching, the buried cells can produce power for months. “Rural Africans are used to getting resources out of the ground,” says team member Aviva Presser Aiden, a doctoral student in applied math and genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “We want to tap that familiarity.”
The MFC produces enough power to charge portable electronics or run LED lighting. As long as it’s ‘watered’, the battery is good for several months.
The Good: An emission-free basic form of electricity for those people who wouldn’t have access to electricity otherwise.
The Bad: The batteries are bulky and require a fair amount of knowledge regarding the correct usage and maintenance. The current is extremely weak. Currently only deployed in Africa.
The Bottom-Line: A simple, eco-friendly, and cost-effective method of providing some form of electricity to people in remote regions.
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