Getting Electricity out of PLANTS!

[Juan]

Sorry for the people who doesn’t speak spanish here, imma check if there is an english version. This could help a TON our climate/environment situation.

[Juan]

Can’t find any english video or with subtitles but his name is Hernán Asto.

[PsychedelicEagle]

Amazing!

[LastThursday]

Interesting stuff. 

From my understanding the guy's created some sort of new polymer that goes in the soil under the plant. The polymer soaks up free electrons created during photosynthesis and turns it into electricity. 

My engineering brain thinks it's too good to be true though.

Firstly, nature isn't generally wasteful, so energy in the form of free electrons shouldn't be there, and if they are then they'll be used for some other biological process: i.e. you're stealing energy away from the plants. Secondly, it's very easy to create a battery nearly out of nothing (think potato battery using some metal strips). It could be the polymer is simply acting like the metal strips in the potato and creating a battery.  In that case the energy isn't coming from the plant at all, but simply the breakdown of the soil and the polymer: so like a battery all the energy will be used up eventually. You never get something for nothing.

Lastly, what's the cost of this polymer and what's the environmental cost of producing it?

 

[mmKay]

Nice. It would be nice to some actual data of how much electricity it generates, the cost of production of the material, etc.

[Ero]

On 1/7/2025 at 2:52 PM, mmKay said:

Nice. It would be nice to some actual data of how much electricity it generates, the cost of production of the material, etc.

My suspicion is it will not stand up to scrutiny. There are kids experiments with making a battery out of lemons or potatoes, but it is not really something you can use industrially. There are better ways for generating clean energy.