extracting power from plants?

[Koen1]

Would it be possible to directly extract electrical energy from living plants?

Obviously electricity can be extracted from soil by using the electrochemical reactions between your electrode material (copper and zinc for example) and the acidity of the soil (and its related electrolytes), basically turning your patch of soil into a chemical battery. Also, "ground radio" em signals can be picked up and the energy stored by using antennae in the ground. But that's not what I had in mind here.

Imagine sticking two electrodes into the stem of a living plant and just leaving them there. Imagine that the plant continues to grow. And imagine you now attach the elecgrodes to a LED and it just lights up and keeps giving off light...

I have not tried it yet, but it might be possible...

Obviously it will work in plants with sufficiently acid sap, just like the well known "lemon battery" works, but that is simply a chemical battery again...
I assume most plants will not survive implantation of a copper electrode as copper is quite poisonous to most organisms in high concentrations.
And in most living plants with acidic sap, the sap is acidic for a good reason, and the plant will no longer function properly if the acidity is altered drastically in any way, including by cause of chemical reaction with a copper electrode.

So perhaps if we use a material that does not react drastically with the plants chemistry, we might keep the plant alive and still get some form of output.
So perhaps if we use carbon, or stainless steel, or something like that... ?

It is also conceivable to use selective "breeding" in an attempt to get plants to cope with implanted electrodes of certain materials...
(for example grow some type of plant in soil that is intentionally "polluted" with copper or whichever metal you want to use, and select the ones that survive best, and do this gneration after generation after generation, to get plants that actually live well with higher copper concentrations.)
These plants should then be more suitable to implant that metal as elecrodes, and could possibly evn utilise the copper in their internal processes.

Does anyone have any thoughts or additional information on this idea?

[psychopath]

Hmm, pretty cool idea. I don't think small plants would give much practical energy, but perhaps trees might(still, it wont solve the crisis).

Since trees get energy from the sun, I don't see how this should not be tappable. Maybe you could have a tree recharger, where you hook up your rechargeable batteries to the tree and they charge up. Or perhaps you could plant lots and lots of trees in your garden, and use them to power your house.

Wow, this is beginning to get cooler and cooler! Perhaps this idea can be used to save the trees, since everbody would be planting them for energy...

I wonder if this would harm the tree since you are using its energy...

ps Still, I don't think it is very practical, but it is definitely very cool and COULD be practical(after all, they said telephones were impractical and of no use). After you figure this out, maybe you could start a "tree fad", where people plant trees and harness the energy just for fun...

[mapsrg]

Found some info regarding extracting power ,using plants to make a new type of solar cell www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040605/fob2.asp

[Koen1]

Okay this is not just a bump

How's about this idea:

We take a plant, specially selected for a few qualities:

1) the plant must naturally grow in, and preferably not show any adverse effects of,
soil with a very high (natural) iron content. (= soil with much ferrite, w?stite,
hematite, magnetite a.k.a. lodestone in the area and red sand areas)

2) the plant must, if no action is taken to prevent this, cause acidification
of the soil. The more acid the soil gets, the better.

Now assuming we have finished our quest for this plant and we have found
one with those qualities,
we take the plant and put it in a pot large enough to contain the plant and
large enough to allow it to grow for a couple of years.
We fill the pot with soil, something like a 50/50 mix of the natural iron rich
soil it was used to and black compost soil.
We stick a not too thin rod in the soil next to the plant, making sure the rod does not
touch the pot bottom. If desired we can attach the plant to the rod to help it grow
and stay upright.

So far nothing really spectacular.
Now let us assume we use an iron pot, and a cabon rod...
That would make for two dissimilar electrodes.
In an acidic moist environment...
... yes, a (weak) galvanic cell!

not sure if this would work at all,
and wondering if maybe the pot should be stainless...
But it is not really a very difficult idea to execute,
so I think I may go looking for the perfect plant this summer.

Reactions or suggestions are always appreciated.

Kind regards,
Koen

[triffid]

Its well known that you can use plants to save electricity. ie, to shade a house.Try wrapping a coil around a tree .You might get an output.I saw one article on the web(rexresearch.com) where trees were used to enhance reception of radio waves dating back to 1910 or sooner.triffid