A NEW LOW-COST source of power is just around the corner: electricity from dirt. It sounds too good to be true, but a group of Harvard students have got together to make it happen and they already have working prototypes.
The beauty of the approach is that near free electricity can also be taken from soil, manure, rotting fruit, coffee grounds and other sources, explain Hugo Van Vuuren and Alexander Fabry, two of eight founding partners in the project, Lebone Solutions.
The world’s first public display of the technology takes place in Dublin tomorrow evening at the Science Gallery on Pearse Street. It is part of the Lightwave Festival and Lebone members will be on hand with working dirt-powered fuel cells. There will also be a free public talk at 7pm by Van Vuuren and Harvard’s Prof David Edwards on the group’s Lighting Africa project.
The research goal is to provide “off-grid” domestic lighting and power for as low a cost as possible, given that as many as 500 million Africans do not have access to on-grid power, says Van Vuuren. The project started when a group of Harvard students got together to do a required year-long research project, which started as an innovative artistic lighting display for the London Olympics in 2012.
Coincidentally, many of the group were students from Africa and the project soon morphed into something far more functional and valuable, a method to provide sufficient off-grid power to light up an African home, Van Vuuren explains.
They built a working system and realised that their device could transform life for many ordinary Africans, says Fabry. It would allow them to move away from dangerous open flame lamps to a safe, environmentally friendly alternative. African students often walk miles to reach on-grid lighting for night-time study.
They decided to advance their project by applying for World Bank funding set aside for its Lighting Africa research challenge. The World Bank provided €160,000, which was added to financial support from the Harvard Initiative for Global Health and the same university’s Idea Translation Lab.
Van Vuuren, Fabry, Aviva Presser and Stephen Lwendo travelled to Tanzania to test the equipment, and now they are expanding their trials to a rural off-grid site in north-east Namibia, says Van Vuuren.
The approach is based on the use of cheap fuel cells which generate direct current electricity using nothing more than natural microorganisms. “It happens on a cellular level,” explains Fabry.
Batteries always have a positive and negative end, and so do the fuel cells. The microbes cluster on the negative electrode and release electrons as they break down nutrients. “It is part of their natural metabolism,” says Fabry.
Just like batteries, the cells can be strung together in series to increase the voltage they produce. They have used a number of nutrient sources, including manure and buckets of rotting fruit, and any local source can be used.
The system only delivers small amounts of power, but it is more than enough for certain jobs, according to Fabry. “The first is safe, clean, reliable electric light,” he says. Just a few cells wired together are enough to light up a room.
The cells can also be used to power a radio or charge a mobile phone.
“We want people to grow their own energy,” says Fabry. “It is about empowering people. When people have ownership of something they make better use of it. We want people to be emotionally connected to it.”
More information on the project and its aims is available at: www.lebone.org
