Researchers in Peru have a new way to capture electricity from plants and bacteria to help rain forest communities.Researchers have developed a technique for capturing the electricity emitted from plants. Actually, to be fair, a genus of bacteria that live in the soil — that do the grunt work. Robby Berman at Slate explains the process:
UTEC has partnered with global ad agency FCB to produce 10 prototypes and distribute them to houses in the rain forest village of Nuevo Saposoa. Each contains an electrode grid buried in dirt, in which a single plant grows. The grid connects to a battery, which powers a large LED lamp attached to an adjustable arm on the outside of the box. The UTEC video below shows the boxes in action (including a money shot of a lamp being triumphantly turned on .“Nutrients in plants encounter microorganisms called ‘geobacters’ in the dirt, and that process releases electrons that electrodes in the dirt can capture. A grid of these electrodes can transfer the electrons into a standard battery.”
