Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months

[LoveMortuus]

> 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... :/

[Maursault]

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.

[hutzlibu]

"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)

[phyalow]

I remember running a calculator via a potato battery when I was much younger.

[aliswe]

Agreed that it's not a lot, but it was also very small.

[phtrivier]

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 ?

[elsherbini]

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.

[hbates]

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.

[andai]

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.

[Eric_WVGG]

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

[mbil]

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?

[withinboredom]

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.

[bin_bash]

What like 10w? That’s nothing compared to almost any other application of electricity.

[mirceal]

Now, that's what I call a blue green deployment... of algae.

[kderbyma]

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.

[sandworm101]

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?

[sp332]

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.

[kaichanvong]

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?

[samstave]

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?

[sigmar]

anyone have the pdf? not seeing https://doi.org/10.1039/D2EE00233G on scihub and it costs £42.50

[gorgonical]

This seems to be a PDF of the paper:

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2022/ee/d2ee0023...

[thinkyfish]

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.

[wwilim]

Now that's what I call a blue-green deployment

[mleonhard]

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

[hamiltonians]

3 green, 1 blue