from Hacker News

Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months

by aq3cn on 5/14/22, 4:42 AM with 57 comments

  • by LoveMortuus on 5/15/22, 11:33 AM

    > 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... :/

  • by phtrivier on 5/15/22, 10:59 AM

    Stupid 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 ?

  • by andai on 5/15/22, 2:29 PM

    Since the algae themselves appear to be producing the electricity, does that mean they are electrically charged and could be sorted into groups of more/less efficient algae? ie. using artificial selection to select for electrical output.

  • by withinboredom on 5/15/22, 10:36 AM

    I 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.

  • by mirceal on 5/15/22, 5:11 PM

    Now, that's what I call a blue green deployment... of algae.

  • by kderbyma on 5/15/22, 3:39 PM

    brilliant. lets use this with skyscraper design to build in aquaponics into the sides of the buildings and get food production, power generation, and local garden life. and everyone can look out into a garden Oasis with algae generating some of the power back into the system.

  • by sandworm101 on 5/15/22, 12:07 PM

    Cool, 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?

  • by samstave on 5/15/22, 3:29 PM

    It would be really interesting to see if "light pipes" ('fiber' optics that can funnel sunlight to interior spaces.

    So stack a bunch of these vertically, but have a light-pipe to each little window to the algea to feed them photons.

    Trickle charge batteries?

  • by sigmar on 5/15/22, 3:51 PM

    anyone have the pdf? not seeing https://doi.org/10.1039/D2EE00233G on scihub and it costs £42.50

  • by thinkyfish on 5/15/22, 8:19 PM

    While I doubt this will be used for main-line power generation, it might be useful for low cost, battery free monitoring for algae farms.

  • by wwilim on 5/15/22, 3:34 PM

    Now that's what I call a blue-green deployment

  • by mleonhard on 5/15/22, 8:37 PM

    Here is a better and non-paywalled article from the researcher's university: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-create-reliab...

    The paper: https://doi.org/10.1039/D2EE00233G

  • by hamiltonians on 5/15/22, 5:44 PM

    3 green, 1 blue