Arm CPU ran on electricity generated by algae for over six months Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry have run an Arm CPU for six months using algae as a power source. As explained in a paper titled Powering a microprocessor by photosynthesis, the biochem boffins built an AA-battery-sized device that hosts an algae named Synechocystis that "naturally …
Algae are definitely much less tyrannical, I agree.. (Day of the Triffids scenarios excepted)
But sadly, this kind of technology is very unlikely to displace the wankers at Drax et al, because the power output is just too piffling.
The world needs something of the order of 1TW to satisfy its electricity demands. This cell produces about 1 or 2 microwatts.
For those who struggle with orders of magnitude, the difference between a microwatt and a terawatt is "One Billion Billions". So even if with further development, this experimental tech could become a million times more powerful (unlikely) so that you could get one whole Watt out of it (enough to keep a phone charged 24/7) then we'd still need a Trillion of them (almost a thousand per person) to "power the planet".
And when the Aluminium anode material degrades and dissolves, we'd have one hell of a pollution problem, not to mention the energy cost of mining and refining all that aluminium in the first place.
And then there's problem of the triffids.. who will have become our new tyrants.
* FTFY, see icon
Apart from large hadron colliders, football stadiums and cryptocurrency mining, who needs massive amounts of electricity on a daily basis ?
No one......
So why produce so fucking much just to see it disipate over the miles from source to consumption ?
Better to produce at home, what your home needs............
Saying no more
ALF
Two problems. First, at-home generation is great, except the methods available tend to be inefficient. You can have your own generator without spending too much money, but you'll be wasting a lot of fuel that generates power you don't need right now. There's a reason they tend to be used only in emergencies. The really big ones tend to be a lot more efficient. Solar panels are a bit better, but storage systems so you can use power at night less so. Again, it's out there and can well be used, but there's a reason many with home solar setups put excess power into the grid during the day and power on something else at night.
Now for the less important problem: "Apart from large hadron colliders, football stadiums and cryptocurrency mining, who needs massive amounts of electricity on a daily basis ?"
Server farms. Factories. Industrial kitchens. Hospitals. Airports. Skyscrapers. Any place with a lot of people. Any place with a lot of machines. My home usage is tiny, but there are a lot of nonresidential users out there.
The other small fact is that most solar etc installations are incredibly cost ineffective. I had a quote for solar panels recently - 14 panels + battery.
a) the suggested installation would not be suitable for heating, I'd have to continue burning oil for that (or freeze which I don't like the idea of)
b) the payback period only dropped below 10 years if I took account of the current price rises, doubled the cost from October and built in a substantial annual increase (can't remember quite what now)
I remember reading an article on the beeb (ie a green supporting organisation) which mentioned ground based heat pumps having a payback of 48 years.
Rob you seem to be confusing a few ideas here.
Solar panels produce electricity, so unless your willing to retrofit your house with electric heating, solar panels are not going to let you heat your house. They will however, help you reduce your electricity bill. Hell our neighbours tell us they get back about €3000 a year from their solar panels (not they save €3000 a year, but they are paid €3000 for their electricity generation, plus whatever they save from not having to pay an electricity bill). We have our Panels on order, although I dont expect to actually get any money back, as we're a relatively high usage household. But if the payback period is 10-15 years then that's what it is. I'll still save money in the long run and help the environment, and I'm happy with that. Your personal calculation may vary.
There are solar thermal installations which could cover your heating, but quite frankly unless your living in the tropics, they aren't worth it. And any competent installer will tell you so. They just dont work well enough in our European climates.
As for Ground heat pumps, 48 years is a lot of bollocks. At least for a new built home - they're highly efficient and relatively cheap to install. I have, however, never heard of anyone getting one installed into an existing home, that I can imagine would be super expensive and pretty dangerous for the house no doubt. You have to dig through the fundament and thats never going to end well. So maybe for a retrofit, the costs would be so high that 48 years might be possible. But no one ever does that. In a new built house, Ground Heat Pumps are an excellent choice and will definitely work out cheaper over 10 years...
"The other small fact is that most solar etc installations are incredibly cost ineffective. I had a quote for solar panels recently - 14 panels + battery.
"
The problem is when you don't understand what you are being quoted and aren't able to determine if it's a good fit or not. I had a friend that was quoted $30,000 for a system. The quote was absurd. They were trying to make him think that installing 10% more than his usage (which would include usage at night) was a good way to make sure he was well covered and earning money back from the power company. Bonkers.
Now that my house is paid, saving for a new roof and solar system is in the works. The first thing I plan to do in advance is wire up some current sensors in my electrical board to see exactly how and when I'm using power over a whole year (if possible). There isn't fine enough detail in my monthly bill to make a rational decision on system size and whether a battery has any ROI at all. I also plan to buy panels second hand. I find lots of deals and I'd be buying some of them when I have a way to fetch them as shipping or renting a truck queers the deal. A trailer hitch and a small trailer is close to tops on my purchase list. In the short term, I expect to power a small chest freezer primarily from solar with a battery back up that is backed up by the grid if all else fails. We get lots of sun where I live so the house is heated with passive (nearly passive if you count the small fans) solar heating panels I built. I bundle up when it's really cold and an electric blanket is awesome in winter. I only need electric heat in the bathroom when I shower. I use propane for hot water and the hob. I am replacing the hot water heater with a tankless heater that I already purchased (new old stock, but still a current model). It focuses attention on conservation when you have to refill propane tanks rather than just having gas piped in. Just for cooking, a 5 gallon propane tank will last me a couple of months. It's keeping water hot that kills it. I am working on a thermal battery to store excess solar power and that will preheat water before it runs through the tankless heater. In summer, the tankless unit may not have to come on for a quick shower.
Metals-processors. There are many glass, aluminum, steel, and rare-metals (titanium, niobium, etc.) processing plants where I live, for one reason: the cheap hydro power we have here. It's why we also have so many gods-cursed, industrial-scale crypto-coin-mining installations.
(That said, we won't be getting any more hydro-electricity-generating dams here, because the resultant lakes would cover too many rich-and-"important" peoples' houses and factories.)
very unlikely to displace the wankers at Drax et al, because the power output is just too piffling
Absolutely, but that's not the use case. If there are going to be billions of tiny devices that need a tiny battery, there are worse ways of providing power than what is essentially a perpetual* source, using free solar energy and non(/not very)-polluting materials, especially if the main raw material needed to produce it is self-replicating and therefore potentially very cheap.
If the efficiency could be improved a million-fold it would be great, of course!
*or at least will last as long / longer than the device it powers
This post has been deleted by its author
While the paper itself is paywalled, if you follow the link it's possible to download the "supplementary information" (appendices and the like). One of these shows the pictured unit with external dimensions of 60mm × 31mm × 23mm. Not really "AA sized", but certainly not car-battery. Possibly the "AA" reference is to the dimensions of the soup-containing part?
M.
A car battery would only garner around 5mA at a best case.
A 1m³ block of this stuff would garner around 1.2 amps (based off back of fag packet calculations) ... Which is actually getting towards a useful amount (losses not permitting).
It would mean if I covered my whole back garden with cubes of the stuff, 1 metre deep, I could in theory get about 40ish amps. Imagine if we could covert things like canals over to running on the stuff. That could actually be useful.
Agreed. It's algae, which can photosynthesize at depths of a few cm < 1m, and the deeper you go the more efficiency you lose, especially if there's a high algae concentration. So you could stack maybe 3,4,5 cells deep, which always helps but not by much. This can be useful for micro scale, not anything more
"If your pond was the size of a lake, with a lake-sized aluminum anode just under its surface, then maybe."
So... that's a Yes then?
Have you ever worked in sales ???
You appear to have the right attitude ....
i.e. all answers mean yes ... until you have the signature on the contract !!!!
:)
~1µA is a very thin power budget. Enough to update about 2cm² of E-Ink display. A normal USB keyboard would need too much power but some lap-top keyboards are electrically just a grid of switches which you can scan with the micro-controller. If you do not type too fast you will be able to see what you type with partial display updates but you would have to wait for sufficient charge to build up to update the whole display when you press 'enter'. You are not short of MHz or Mbytes but losses in the voltage converters would kill the project. Use 10 power cells instead of just one and an algae powered adventure would be nearly possible while the sun shines.
Meanwhile the silicon PV powered adventure would be happily awaiting your next move. And it costs orders of magnitude less energy to manufacture.
This paper is not much more than a greenwash-machine, so that corporate social responsibility types can pretend that they are saving the planet by installing an algae-powered calculator in the finance office. (meanwhile the A/C is on with the windows open, thus wiping out the algae's efforts a billion times over)
If we want to save the actual planet, we need to drop all the FUD about nuclear power, immediately.
"The world needs...to satisfy its electricity demands."
We know from building roads that demand increases as supply increases. The world needs to reduce it's demands!
Or at least think smarter. For example a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button. A video doorbell could be on social media and powered by the views it gets. Royal Mail could be funded by people who get snail mail - you have to pass a sandwich through your letter box before they pass letters. Elections and politicians could be sponsored by foreign oligarchs.
I've been watching Star Trek: The Animated Series (the 4th series I hadn't heard of until a few days ago) and I think it is a bad idea to give control of Arm to the algae. They'll soon figure out they are being exploited and there are more of them than us. It'd be as crazy as giving away your wafer-fabs and nuclear plants to the Chinese.
> The world needs to reduce it's demands!
Sure, the problem is just to find someone who accepts to start it... Nobody will accept to be the first, and all unanimously claim their rights to abundance (at least the level they can afford).
Of course there is the simple, tried and tested solution of forcing the poor to reduce their demands, after all they are legion and easy to control, but the affluent and influential will quickly gobble up that small surplus generated, after all it would only cover a luxury apartment in [Big Capital] or a new supercar for a handful of big enchiladas.
So yes, while probably the better solution, it is practically unenforceable.
The world population is currently overstretched beyond the planet's means to support it. As a species, we have reached the edge of the petri dish.
Any volunteers to be the first country to starve to death for lack of energy?
No? Didn't think so.. We'll have to draw straws then.
(see icon)
> Any volunteers to be the first country to starve to death
You clearly don't understand how that works: Those volunteers are designated by those countries who have the power to do so, among those countries who don't have the power to prevent it. And inside each country it's the same on the individual level, so there is never a shortage of "volunteers" to push out of the petri dish...
Cynical? Yes, but realistic too.
Royal Mail could be funded by people who get snail mail - you have to pass a sandwich through your letter box before they pass letters.
Three days a week my posties come around lunch time. Are they going to want a hot meal? How do you pour soup through a letter box?(*)
Elections and politicians could be sponsored by foreign oligarchs.
Umm? But I thought they already were …
(*) Answer: messily.
Thin, wide tupperware boxes. Or a funnel with an on/off valve.
[True story. It's comedic so you won't believe me but it's sad so you might. I wasn't getting out much and I developed a crush on my postman woman/girl person in her short shorts, and over months was steeling myself to ask her out. I finally worked up the courage and then she knocked on my door and said, "You've got a big package!", handing me a parcel too big for the letterbox. My cheeks went crimson.
I just couldn't look her in the face after that, and she stopped delivering my mail. In my dotage I like to think she was deliberately flirting with me and was devastated when I didn't reply, "Because of your lovely legs."]
@Danny2 you're dead right. But pursuading people is the hard part, because everyone needs a wall size TV. I use a hand wound coffee grinder, and it takes about the same time to use as an electric one.
" For example a doorbell could be powered by the push of the button
Until around 1900 they used to be 'powered' by pulling a rod that pulled a wire that waggled a bell on a spring. You can now buy very expensive replicas of these.
Until around 1900 they used to be ‘powered’ by pulling a rod that pulled a wire that waggled a bell on a spring. You can now buy very expensive replicas of these.
There were also Victorian-era twist- and lever-actuated enclosed “interior” doorbells; replicas of them are still available. A manually “powered” door knocker is another option.
> The world needs to reduce it's demands!
I don't think that's going to happen. From what I understand of how the world works, we'll reduce demand through a world war, before we reduce it by agreement. We simply don't have any political framework that can reliably prioritize the long-term. I sincerely hope a technical solution comes up, because at the moment I can't even imagine what a political solution would look like.
We have a perfectly good technical solution - it's called nuclear fission.
Unfortunately, some twats in the 60s were terribly interested in using civil nuclear power plants to manufacture weapons, which caused the reputation of nuclear power to become irreperably tarnished. Then in the 80s, we narrowly averted nuclear war.
There ARE nuclear fission designs that are able to consume the world's stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium in a safe way, to produce enormous amounts of cheap energy. But because of the earlier crises, we are so scared of nuclear power that we regulate it into the ground so that it is unbelievably expensive when it should be cheap- and we end up with no new designs for the past 5 decades, and act all surprised when we find that all our nuclear power stations are crumbling, because they were built in the 60s.
If we fail to sustain ourselves with peaceful nuclear fission, then the only option is war (with nuclear weapons, and/or automated genocide machines), as we struggle for the last of the fossil fuel, and the last of the food.
The unsolvable problem with nuclear fission is that greedy and/or insufficiently-caring and/or insufficiently-imagination-possessing people design, build, and run the plants, take cheap/careless shortcuts, and so eventually cause disasters.
That's a people-problem, not a technology-problem.
"A doorbell could be powered by the push of a button". My doorbell is. It's at least 60 years old, and probably no-longer made. You push the button, and it goes 'ding'; you release the button and it goes 'dong'.
Many things are electrically-powered when they need not be so.
Had a simple LCD clock that was lemon powered, many years ago as a kid. Smelt nice, plus we had a lemon tree.
When we tried potatoes, they didn't smell as good but lasted a bit longer.
Can't remember how long they lasted, but it's doubtful anywhere near a month, so it will be interesting to see the actual output figures , over time, they got !
"Can't remember how long they lasted, but it's doubtful anywhere near a month,"
That's something I've always known about but never tried. I wonder if it'd last longer wrapped and sealed in clingfilm or similar? I'm assuming the EOL was lemon or potato related and not the electrodes wearing out.
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