Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months
newscientist.com> 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... :/
Thank you for the accurate and concise summary of what I wanted to know, but I think that this has larger implications that has nothing to do with computers or algae. As you observed, that is really not a lot of power. And off I go... it is incredible that that is not a lot of power, iow, what can be achieved optimizing for low-power is nothing short of miraculous, and we as a global society... we should suck it up, optimize for low power, and immediately ban everything contributing to Global Warming, and stop it by force if necessary, you know, optimized for zero casualties using psyops and harmless hallucinogenic bombs. We should get with our allies, get China on board, and take over the world, and stop Global Warming with a quickness. Power hogs can read books and sleep at night instead of insisting on more and more power.
I keep looking for, and failing to find, any metrics that suggest that GPUs or CPUs have gotten more efficient and less energy intensive over time. Simple intuition would suggest "yes, obviously, of course", but I would love to see a simple line graph indicating so. Toms Hardware seems like a good place to look, but their comparisons dont overlap backwards very far
I think they have gotten more efficient. Just by the fact that pretty much every laptop today has a much better battery life then any had many years ago. Of course the difference is also in the battery tech, but the change and improvement is still visible.
Devices probably became more energy efficient in that they can do more with 1 watt-hour, but I doubt if they suck up less watt-hours: probably more.
"blue-green algae might not be very scalable..."
Actually, the idea is, that they are very scalable, because to make more solar panels you have to manufacture more panels.
To make more algae(and get more power), you just let it grow.
So you still have to build more sun exposed tanks but this is very low tech, compared to cleanroom solar panel manufacturing. What is missing is probably a breakthrough in genetic modified improved efficeny, which is currently indeed very low (way lower than solar panels per area)
The energy embodied in the metal used to make their housing is more than the entire possible energy they could make in any reasonable timeframe.
So no, this isn't scalable.
On top of that despite them saying the anode was not corrected, it's almost certain the algae aren't making any electricity at all, it's all coming from the cathode and anode oxidizing.
It's easy enough to tell - just let them die and let's see if there is a different in energy output. I can almost guarantee there will not be any difference.
To be fair, I was unable to find the original document, so we don't actually know how many watts the algae generator can provide, we only know how much the computer that they used consumed, also they did note that after 6 months the algae was dead.
That being said, I'm sceptical about the scalability of the algae generator because it's efficiency would have to increase by about 1000x (if we assume that right now it can generate what the computer used while calculating).
Today an average AA battery has t the capacity of 3Wh some even 4Wh. And at 3Wh you could, theoretically, charge your phone at 5V 1A for like half an hour or there about.
Our in other words, what I'm talking about when I question the scalability is energy density. That's the reason why you can do more then 700km with a car that runs on fossil fuels and maybe 350km if it's not too hot and not to cool with an electric car.
Could we engineer there algae to be 1000x times more efficient or even just 500x more efficient, since as long as the algae is alive you don't really need to charge anything. You do need the sun though, these are, from what I understand photosynthetic algae.
That's only scalable if the material & labor costs to build and maintain the tanks is within a certain margin.
How many m^2 of algae is required to equal a m^2 of solar? From there you could calculate relative costs, given reasonable assumptions of lowered tank/algae costs as the tech matured.
"How many m^2 of algae is required to equal a m^2 of solar?"
Some years ago, the efficency was at around 1 % vs. 20% with solar panels, meaning you would need 20× the space, meaning only dessert areas and big scale production worth it. And since no one did it big scale yet, means it is economically not worth it yet.
But the cost of further algae itself are zero, which makes the idea attractive in theory. Like I said, there is a breakthrough required in efficency, or some cheap big scale production/deployment system.
Hum... A large share of the solar costs are on support and installation. Those are proportional to the area, and are even higher (by area) for algae, because algae requires some water, and water is heavy.
So, if they need 20x the area, just their support and installation will already cost some 5x more than a full solar plant.
Also these algae need an open system so that they don't kul themselves. And I think they might be much more sensitive to heat and especially cold then solar panels.
Algae are living creatures just like humans and stuff, so keeping them alive is probably harder then with solar which is basically just nicely arranged rocks and crystals.
Seems like floating applications might works as well, a large raft of connected plastic bladders on a reservoir might work. Reduce water loss due to evaporation by decreasing light hitting the reservoir at the same time as generating power.
Or it might just need an applications where panels aren't viable but algae is. Not sure what that would be, but I also don't consider myself a visionary. Maybe a high dust area where maintenance isn't practical for panels?
I had a dream that some super-algae leaked out of a lab and colonized the oceans killing nearly all marine life.
Are you sure your memory isn't just a bit hazy from last time that happened? I think there are credible reasons to believe the lab leak never happened, but anyone could be forgiven for losing some details in two and a half billion years.
The super algea we are looking for here, would likely have no chance in the wild anymore, because to optimize some desired traits (thriving in a protected, stable environment) usually means giving up on other traits, which will force them down when they have competition. (same argument applies to GMO plants)
I remember running a calculator via a potato battery when I was much younger.
Just in case you don't know: The energy to power your calculator did not come from the potato. It came from the metals you used in the potato. The metals are slowly oxidizing and that reaction (a kind of burning) produces the energy.
The same thing is happening here - it's not the algae producing energy, it's the metal anode and cathode.
Did you read the article?
> "Because the experiment ran without any significant degrading of the anode the researchers believe that the cyanobacteria are producing the bulk of the current."
I read the article. I saw what they said and I do not believe them for the following reasons:
1: Looking at an anode and saying "yup not corroded" is not how you check such things.
2: If they actually wanted to check it, there are several methods, they did none of them. They include: Weighing it, killing the algae and seeing if the power output changes, trying other metals for the anodes, trying other plants instead of algae in the water.
3: If you put salt water between two anodes you will get electricity. Period. If they claim this didn't happen, and "the algae did it", you're going to have to posit some method for the algae to prevent this, while substituting their own electricity. This will require new chemistry.
4: Algae are non-polar, so I don't see how they can direct the positive and negative current toward the proper anode to make electricity.
I have read the paper. They showed photosensitivity by both autoclaving the sample and adding DMCU to prevent photosynthesis. Both reduced power production. They do suggest a component of power production is related to electrolytic activity because they observe a dark setting power production; under a light setting the power production nearly doubles.
They also discuss the possibility that the algae are just promoting the oxidation of the aluminum, but do a series of assays I don't fully understand and conclude that some of the current produced is most likely from the algae themselves.
Link to paper: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/ee/d2ee0023...
How was this quantified? How much degradation would be expected if the amount of power were to be drawn from the equivalent battery without algae?
Agreed that it's not a lot, but it was also very small.
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 ?
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.
> In the wild, the limiting nutrient for cyanobacteria is often iron or nitrogen.
How can nitrogen be a limiting factor if ~78% of air is nitrogen? I'm assuming they also take the CO2 out of the air, which just makes up 0.04%.
Some cyanobacteria can take up nitrogen from the air (well, dissolved inorganic nitrogen), but many can only use organic nitrogen, like N03 or NH4. Those can be limiting in the ocean because lots of life wants to grab it up.
Taking up inorganic nitrogen is called nitrogen fixation and takes a bunch of machinery and energy. Also, oxygen inhibits the process, so for photosynthetic bacteria a bunch of extra steps have to be taken to compartmentalize photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation. So not all cyanobacteria can do it, and even the ones who are able to will prefer to take up organic nitrogen if available, and they grow slower when they have to use N2.
Nitrogen is often the limiting factor for ALL plant growth, which is why it's the primary component of fertilizer.
Nitrogen in air is not normally available to organisms. The triple bond between the 2 nitrogen atoms is very strong and takes a good deal of energy to break. Some bacteria can do this, and legumes famously have evolved to house bacteria capable of fixing nitrogen in their roots.
The main way we get nitrogen to agricultural plants today is by the industrial production of ammonia, which takes enormous amounts of energy and lots of fossil fuels as presently implemented.
Not the GP and I do not have relevant scientific expertise, but my memory from beer is that CO2 stays dissolved longer than N2? Are they underwater?
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.
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.
my first thought before reading the article was, "are we even talking about an electric computer here?"
There are all sorts… some MIT wonks built one that plays tik tak toe that's made of tinker-toys and powered by a crank… in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, a computer built from a church pipe organ is used to decrypt third reich punch cars… all quite feasible.
But yeah, this is algae-for-electricity… pretty cool regardless, but it does make me wonder if some sort of bio-abacus could be possible
Riffing on this idea but with no real understanding of the mechanism: could crispr be used to extract the “produces electricity” gene and then put that into bigger organisms?
Only if by “electricity producing gene” you mean “is a photosynthesising algae gene”
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.
What like 10w? That’s nothing compared to almost any other application of electricity.
What's your comparison to there? 10w is a reasonable amount of power and you can do lots with it - my M1 Mac can browse the internet on 10w of power.
It’s a reasonable amount for computing but not much else: heating, cooling, cooking, refrigeration, washing machine. Those all need vastly more electricity.
About the only other household application of electricity I can think of that would use around 10w is lighting and even with LEDs it isn’t much. Probably enough for a single room.
My point is if mobile phones aren't considered “low power”, then what would be?
The context clearly was computing, and not cooking, right? It’s not surprising that the term “low power” is relative and thus overloaded. But if you bring cooking ovens into a conversation about computers, then a beefy desktop with two GPUs burning hot would be considered low power.
I don’t know that there’s a standard definition, but in electronics I think it’s most common for “low power devices” to be referring to sub-watt power levels. There’s regular low power like Arduino, or ultra low power like in this article that consume at most milliwatts or microwatts.
It is about general electricity applications and not limited to computing. The article states:
> “It’s not entirely straightforward,” he says. “So putting one on your roof isn’t going to provide the power supply for your house at this stage. There’s quite a bit more to do on that front. But [it could work] in rural areas of low and middle income countries, for example, in applications where a small amount of power might be very useful, such as environmental sensors or charging a mobile phone.”
That’s a disclaimer, scoping out certain applications per the research and qualified by “There’s quite a bit more to do on that front.”
I don’t it’s wrong to think about the general applications but the title and research had a very narrow focus.
Agreed, nobody thinks you could run a dishwasher on this technology. My point is the only place where the article labeled mobile phones as “low power” was in this disclaimer to contrast it with other household appliances.
Fair enough.
It’s also easy to miss that this was with a “AA” size container, and not the size of a pail or a dot battery.
A clock maybe
Now, that's what I call a blue green deployment... of algae.
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.
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?
Yeah, but solar panels are expensive and usually require international freight shipping. This kind of thing could be made locally and you only need to ship a small inoculation of the algae.
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?
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?
anyone have the pdf? not seeing https://doi.org/10.1039/D2EE00233G on scihub and it costs £42.50
This seems to be a PDF of the paper:
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/ee/d2ee0023...
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.
Now that's what I call a blue-green deployment
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
3 green, 1 blue