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TheWhiteLancer t1_j4vgf0a wrote

So they made a potato battery? If I propose I make a lemon battery, but I leave it on the tree, will that get me grant funding too?

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TheWingus t1_j4vl5r6 wrote

Or perhaps a lemon that explodes and burns down your house!!

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TexacoRandom t1_j4vlmm2 wrote

"Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons!"

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Current-Power-6452 t1_j4w6di3 wrote

If life gives you lemons just got a whole new meaning

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SnipingNinja t1_j4wxlbe wrote

They're quoting Cave Johnson from portal 2 game, he said that in context of life giving lemons

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thisisnotdan t1_j4vo1w3 wrote

It does look suspiciously like a potato battery! Those batteries consume the anode, though, so the power they "generate" actually comes at the cost of the metal you stick into them. The potato just enables you to harness the power of rusting.. According to the abstract of the paper linked in the article, though:

> The addition of the photosystem II inhibitor 3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)-1,1-dimethylurea inhibits the photocurrent, indicating that water oxidation is the primary source of electrons in the light.

If I'm reading this right, it means that, rather than consuming the iron anode like a potato battery would, the water molecules themselves are "consumed," producing hydrogen gas (and maybe oxygen gas?).

Biological systems are complex, though, and I've never even fully understood how a regular battery works (to my own satisfaction; I passed college physics courses well enough), so I could be understanding this incorrectly.

EDIT: At the risk of being even more wrong, it looks like (based on the diagram shown next to the abstract) what's happening is that the electrodes in the leaf are "short-circuiting" the normal photosynthesis process by catalyzing a reaction of NADH (an important molecule in photosynthesis) that generates capturable electricity and releases hydrogen gas as a byproduct.

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Madgick t1_j4vrgtx wrote

Thanks for doing some more digging. honestly the article is pretty shoddy. The reference image looks like someone labelled a jpeg of a science fair project in MS Paint. It was especially disappointing after the green battery looking image that opens the article.

So at least (if they're correct) the power is coming directly from photosynthesis rather than just some degradation of the materials used.

It's interesting at least, but it's still pretty useless if you'd have to wire up a whole plant leaf to leaf for it to become scalable as they suggested.

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crablegs_aus t1_j4vlop1 wrote

Yeah this was far more low tech than I expected it to be…

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