The global race is on to find efficient and sustainable sources of power. What if people could electrify their homes and businesses using flowers or trees? That is the hope behind several projects currently investigating organic-electronic fuel cells. But how would it work?
How Can Flowers Power Fuel Cells?
A team of scientists at Linköping University in Sweden are hard at work perfecting plant-based supercapacitors. The ultimate goal is to turn plants into automated energy generation systems and the team wants to use roses as distributed solar power cells. The implications are enormous, especially for meeting the power needs of distributed computing infrastructure like IoT (Internet of Things) sensors. “Our results demonstrate that energy storage and wide-spread tapping out of electrical energy can be achieved in plants,” said professor Magnus Berggren.
So how does it work? The team began by implanting an electrically conductive plastic directly into the vascular system of the rose. This is the series of tissues that transports nutrients, water, molecular signals and other organic materials throughout a plant. As the flower grows, it further distributes this conductive material, essentially building circuits, conducting wires and power storage capacity throughout the flower.
According to Berggren, the team has successfully charged the rose “repeatedly, for hundreds of times without any loss on the performance of the device.” The flowers have — for all intents and purposes — become batteries.
So far, they have successfully used these electrified flowers to power their research apparatus, including ion pumps and multiple sensors. The team points out that the devices don’t require any optimization after they grow. The process of creating them is deceptively straightforward, but it yields a kind of power-supply device the world has never seen before.
Where Does the Concept Go From Here?
The Linköping scientists have a lot of work ahead, but they already see the vast potential for electronic devices fabricated in this fashion. Initial forays down this scientific avenue have focused on turning roses into organic, distributed power storage devices. Further iterations would see the team making even more impressive strides. Right now, the challenge is overcoming the current rose-based design’s storage capacity and wire conductivity, which fall far below the capabilities of engineered power devices.
Berggren believes they are closing in on brand-new technologies that would allow the implanted synthetic materials within the roses to store power and generate it. Plants rely on chemical energy to carry out their biological processes, which they capture first as solar energy. The team at Linköping University believes they are close to finding a solution for this lofty goal. Plants are highly efficient at capturing solar energy and converting it into usable chemical energy and the ability to harness this process for humans would change the world.
When they announced their findings and ambitions to the world, the research team was still determining where this potential would carry them. Several questions remain about how the technology — and the plants it is built on — will fare over the longer term.
For example, it is not clear, when using roses as electrical energy storage devices, what effect that will have on the plant’s ability to produce oxygen and nourishment. Imagine a forest full of trees carrying subtle power storage and distribution networks without substantially impacting their aesthetic value. It could be possible, but the science is novel and not fully explored yet.
Harnessing Organic Processes for Energy Generation
Even those suffering from plant allergies can get excited about this ongoing research — roses are some of the best flowers for allergy sufferers. But even if the idea of a field full of energy-distributing roses is not exciting, there’s plenty of other research going on concerning plant-based fuel cells.
Fuel cells often use hydrogen, but scientists are also looking into microbe-based fuel cells to further capitalize on nature’s highly efficient processes. Fuel cells store and distribute power much less impactfully than batteries because they do not require mining rare-earth minerals and their only byproducts are heat and steam.
How Flowers Could Power Fuel Cells
The notion of turning roses and other plants into nodes in a vast, clean, highly efficient energy distribution system is fascinating. It is also early in development, so trees will not send power to houses soon. Still, it is good to know the scientific community leaves no stone — or petal — unturned in the pursuit of a greener, cleaner world.
Jane Marsh, Contributor
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Fuel Cells Works, its directors, partners, staff, contributors, or suppliers. Any content provided by our contributors or authors are of their own opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
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