The digital clock says it’s 2:42 – the blinking colon counting the seconds below a mysterious green box.
The digital clock says it’s 2:42 – the blinking colon counting the seconds below a mysterious green box. At a time when ‘being green’ matters more than ever, a team of Cambridge researchers has devised a way to power electronic devices that’s taken the brief quite literally.
“We’ve found a way to tap into a natural process in algae, and use it to generate continuous electricity 24/7 without harming the plant at all,” says Dr Paolo Bombelli in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry. He’s scientific lead of a project that began two decades ago - and his self-confessed obsession with algae shows no sign of letting up.
The algae are ‘photosynthetic cyanobacteria’: ancient, aquatic microorganisms that harvest sunlight and take carbon dioxide out of the air to power their growth. This process involves a continuous flow of electrons - essentially electricity - and the team has worked out how to tap off a fraction of it and use this to power electrical devices.
Read More: University of Cambridge
