Efficient Solar Cells
About: microbe makes most of light - ern
- Also in Energy Research News is the thought that BioMass conversion to Electricty is more efficient than Ethanol. The term used is bioelectricity. The one thing I am somewhat familiar with is using microbes to convert pig shit to electricity. OTOH, there is a possibility somewhere to model electric eels!
The term in the Wikipedia is electrocytes for the cells that make the electricity. There are fish besides eels that can do this.I remember as a kid I saw an electric eel in a pet shop in an aquarium about 3 cu feet in size. Whenever the eel got excited by tapping the aquarium or ? it set off a gizmo mounted on the top that gave out a huge spark & noise; presumably some kind of capacitor. How would one convert capacitor electricity to either battery or AC. How many electric eels would it take to power a car?
When agitated, an electric eel can produce electric shocks intermittently over a period of at least an hour without showing any signs of tiring. A current of 0.93 amps driven by 750 volts provides around 698 watts of power, so just a couple of overwrought electric eels could boil your kettle. They also do this when having sex. Given that out energy consumption per person is approx 6753 KW that works out to ~ 10,000 electric electric eel moments. A moment might be an hour. There are 8760 hours in a year. So two well harnessed eels would do the job. 
If this information is true then a couple of fucking eels in each household would solve the energy problem!
Tags
- bioelectricity
- solar power
- solar cells
- electrocyte
Comments
Seth says
Eel power ... i like it 
, but does it scale?
Btw, i think a lot of recent research into energy from biomass does not focus on conversion either directly to electricity or conversion to Ethanol. Rather it focuses on conversion directly to a kind of oil which is very similar to diesel. This field has been very active of late, here is one new blog that specializes in Algae.
Eel power ... i like it , but does it scale?Btw, i think a lot of recent research into energy from biomass does not focus on conversion either directly to electricity or conversion to Ethanol. Rather it focuses on conversion directly to a kind of oil which is very similar to diesel. This field has been very active of late, here is one new blog that specializes in Algae.
Mark de LA says
seth 2009-06-01 11:23:46 12037
Eel power ... i like it , but does it scale?
Btw, i think a lot of recent research into energy from biomass does not focus on conversion either directly to electricity or conversion to Ethanol. Rather it focuses on conversion directly to a kind of oil which is very similar to diesel. This field has been very active of late, here is one new blog that specializes in Algae.
Eel power ... i like it , but does it scale?Btw, i think a lot of recent research into energy from biomass does not focus on conversion either directly to electricity or conversion to Ethanol. Rather it focuses on conversion directly to a kind of oil which is very similar to diesel. This field has been very active of late, here is one new blog that specializes in Algae.
The problem with biomas->electricity is that most of the methods involve burning or converting to methanol which is burned. I could imagine a neighborhood eel cell that would be cultivated to put out a neighborhood's electricity demands. It wouldn't be enough to power cars or other massive consumers, but it's a start. The reason it originally caught my eye is that I followed a ERN where they modeled low light bacteria to make better solar cells & wondered if someone could model the electric eel cells at the nanotube level to produce electricity.
Seth says
MR 2009-06-01 11:48:33 12037
seth 2009-06-01 11:23:46 12037
Eel power ... i like it , but does it scale?
Btw, i think a lot of recent research into energy from biomass does not focus on conversion either directly to electricity or conversion to Ethanol. Rather it focuses on conversion directly to a kind of oil which is very similar to diesel. This field has been very active of late, here is one new blog that specializes in Algae.
Eel power ... i like it , but does it scale?Btw, i think a lot of recent research into energy from biomass does not focus on conversion either directly to electricity or conversion to Ethanol. Rather it focuses on conversion directly to a kind of oil which is very similar to diesel. This field has been very active of late, here is one new blog that specializes in Algae.
The problem with biomas->electricity is that most of the methods involve burning or converting to methanol which is burned. I could imagine a neighborhood eel cell that would be cultivated to put out a neighborhood's electricity demands. It wouldn't be enough to power cars or other massive consumers, but it's a start. The reason it originally caught my eye is that I followed a ERN where they modeled low light bacteria to make better solar cells & wondered if someone could model the electric eel cells at the nanotube level to produce electricity.
Yep Eel-Cells would be super cool. Algae also would work well. It is CO2 neutral. The same amount of CO2 is fixed during production that is released during combustion. The net result would be the same as the Eel-Cells.
Mark de LA says
Also there is mimicking nature: http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html
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