Now new device to generate power from trees!
Several researchers discovered that there’s sufficient power in the living trees to run entire electric circuit. It is great news in today’s high-tech world full of portable gadgets where readily available electric outlets are needed to power the devices we use. The University of Washington researchers have revealed the nature’s alternative to power outlet: the living trees.
UW engineers Brian Otis and Babak Parviz have now invented one electrical device which can also be plugged easily into any tree to get power. “This is a first peer-reviewed paper, as far as we know, of anyone powering anything totally by just sticking electrodes into the tree,” Parviz said.
The study was based on the breakthrough study got last year from the MIT- where the scientists found that the plants could produce a voltage of around 200 millivolts- on placing an electrode in them and other one in a nearby soil. Those examiners are also designing few devices which could act as forest sensors- entirely powered by this fresh method. Until now, no one was able to apply such findings to growth of tree power.
It began the last summer when an UW undergraduate student named Carlton Himes, who is also co-author of the study, spent his whole summer around the woods near the campus- by clasping nails to the big maple leaf trees and then connecting them to the voltmeter. Surprisingly, the trees showed a stable voltage of nearly few hundred millivolts.
Source: mnn.com
