Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
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Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#2I find it funny that a mobile was listed as "low power devices." Phones these days consume quite a bit of electricity, unless they are referring to old-style flip phones, which might use quite a bit less power.
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#3Stupid question : do the bacteria manage the create their organic mass entirely from air + sunlight, or does the "container" need a special substrate / soil / etc... ? How fast would that "deplete" relative to the metals in the anode / cathode ?
Also, how much does it "capture" carbon as part of the photosynthesis ?
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#4> The computer ran in cycles of 45 minutes of calculating sums of consecutive integers to simulate a computational workload, which required 0.3 microwatts of power, and 15 minutes of standby, which required 0.24 microwatts. The computer itself measured the current output from the device and this data was stored in the cloud for researchers to analyse.
> Christopher Howe at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues built a small enclosure about the size of an AA battery out of aluminium and clear plastic.
That's REALLY not a lot of power, which of course is reasonable, but I do wonder how far can it scale, can it reach any generally usable.
Let's take a very conservative estimate of watt-hours of an AA battery of 2 Wh. The computer used in the paper could run for 2,000,000 µWh / 0.3 µW = ~6,666,666h.
Let's convert to a more human friendly numbers: 6,666,666h / 24h = ~277,777 days. 277,777 days / 365 days = ~761 years.
I probably calculated all of this incorrectly, but I still have a feeling that blue-green algae might not be very scalable... :/
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#5> The computer ran in cycles of 45 minutes of calculating sums of consecutive integers to simulate a computational workload, which required 0.3 microwatts of power, and 15 minutes of standby, which required 0.24 microwatts. The computer itself measured the current output from the device and this data was stored in the cloud for researchers to analyse. > Christopher Howe at the University of Cambridge and his colleagu…
Agreed that it's not a lot, but it was also very small.
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#6Stupid question : do the bacteria manage the create their organic mass entirely from air + sunlight, or does the "container" need a special substrate / soil / etc... ? How fast would that "deplete" relative to the metals in the anode / cathode ? Also, how much does it "capture" carbon as part of the photosynthesis ?
Here are a bunch of different media people use to grow cyanobacteria:
https://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/media/table/media.html
Mostly they need nitrogen, phosphate, and sulfur to make protein and nucleic acids, and trace metals,ions, and some vitamins to use as cofactors for enzymes. In the wild, the limiting nutrient for cyanobacteria is often iron or nitrogen.
They don't need an added carbon source in their media since they get to eat dissolved CO2 from the air. Every carbon atom in newly synthesized molecules comes from CO2, and there are (very roughly) 10^10 carbon atoms per bacterial cell. http://book.bionumbers.org/what-is-the-elemental-composition... . So if you know the growth rate you can estimate the carbon fixation rate.
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#7Stupid question : do the bacteria manage the create their organic mass entirely from air + sunlight, or does the "container" need a special substrate / soil / etc... ? How fast would that "deplete" relative to the metals in the anode / cathode ? Also, how much does it "capture" carbon as part of the photosynthesis ?
The liquid in the container would contain medium that contains chemicals that the microalgae need. Heres a common medium recipe BG-11 https://utex.org/products/bg-11-medium
Carbon is captured through photosynthesis and is stored as biomass. But when the microalgae dies the carbon is released again. So to truely store carbon the microalgae needs to be cultivated and buried / contained.
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#8Cool, but can this tech ever approach the effectiveness of a smiliarly-sized solar panel? Sure, a solar panel does not directly absorb CO2, but at this point wouldnt a panel generate literally a thousand times as much power without all the maintenace issues?
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#9I find it funny that a mobile was listed as "low power devices." Phones these days consume quite a bit of electricity, unless they are referring to old-style flip phones, which might use quite a bit less power.
What like 10w? That’s nothing compared to almost any other application of electricity.
Re: Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
#10Cool, but can this tech ever approach the effectiveness of a smiliarly-sized solar panel? Sure, a solar panel does not directly absorb CO2, but at this point wouldnt a panel generate literally a thousand times as much power without all the maintenace issues?
topics could be errr nicer linked perhaps, source being Energy & Environmental Science, NS website tagged: BACTERIA, COMPUTER, ALGAE ... is this the wrong part of the web for you now?