UW Researchers Use Nanotech to Store Energy from Trees

Filed in archive Energy on September 10, 2009

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have published an article in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) Transactions on Nanotechnology, which finds that trees can be used to generate electricity.

"The new research builds on a study last year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where researchers found that plants could generate a voltage of up to 200 millivolts when one electrode was placed in the plant and another was placed in the surrounding soil," according to Greenbang. "The MIT team has since started a company to develop forest sensors that tap into that energy source. The UW researchers took those findings a step further by successfully building - for the first time - a circuit that can [run] solely off tree power. "

"The scientists built a custom boost converter using nanotechnology that stores input voltages of as little as 20 millivolts (20 thousandths of a volt) and produces 1.1 volts — enough to run low-power sensors that might monitor environmental conditions, help detect forest fires or gauge the health of trees," writes thedailygreen's Dan Shapley.

"The circuit the UW team developed is built from parts measuring 130 nanometers and consumes on average just 10 nanowatts of power during operation," writes Gizmag's Darren Quick. "Normal electronics obviously aren't going to run on these types of voltages and currents, so there's no use packing that big screen TV for your next camping trip, but as new generations of technology come online they will continue to re-evaluate what is doable and not doable in terms of a tree power source."

The press release is here.