These bugs can turn cylindrical rotors and generate power, like in a wind farm.
By Rakesh Agrawal
Life of the modern Homo sapience is unthinkable without a Smartphone!
And, such an inseparable gadget of needs to be constantly recharged and electricity is not omnipresent across the globe, recharging them sometimes becomes a headache. Now, the British scientists have come to our rescue as they are getting ready to harness power of bacteria in tiny wind farms to keep your Smartphone never without power!
Already, Oxford University physicist Dr Tyler Shendruk has conducted the study, showing that the invisible bugs that nobody wants to invade our food, home or children, but can be used to power our mobile phones.
Accordingly, bacterium’s natural movement can be harnessed to make batteries and power mini machines like switches and components in smartphones.
These bugs can turn cylindrical rotors and generate power, like in a wind farm.
This way, bacterium could be alternative to the battery-powered mobile phone, eliminating the problem of reduced battery lifespan and daily re-charging.
‘One potential way to generate tiny amounts of power for micro machines might be to harvest it directly from biological systems such as bacteria,’ says Dr Shendruk.
Professor Julia Yeomans, the co-author of the research, published in the journal Science Advances, said harnessing ‘natural engines’ had enormous potential for the future since, “Nature is brilliant at creating tiny engines, and there is enormous potential if we can understand how to exploit similar designs.”
Dr Amin Doostmohammadi, another scientist of the research team, added that extracting a ‘tiny amount’ of mechanical work from such bacteria was valuable as they their own power to move around that can be harnessed to our advantage. “At micro scales, our simulations show the flow generated by biological assemblies is capable of reorganizing itself in such a way as to generate a persistent mechanical power for rotating an array of micro rotors,” he said.
Other than Lacto bacillus that coverts milk to curd, his bacteria could convert its movements into gigawatts of power!