demonstration

Powering an E-Ink Display from Soil Bacteria

Authors:

Gabriel Marcano,

Pat PannutoAuthors Info & Claims

SenSys '21: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems

Pages 590 - 591

https://doi.org/10.1145/3485730.3493363

Published: 15 November 2021 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

This demo showcases the power delivery potential of soil-based microbial fuel cells. We build a prototype energy harvesting setup for a soil microbial fuel cell, measure the amount of power that we can harvest, and use that energy to drive an e-ink display. Microbial fuel cells are highly sensitive to environmental conditions, especially soil moisture. In near-optimal, super moist conditions our cell provides approximately 100 μW of power at around 500 mV, which is ample power over time to power our system several times a day. In sum, we find that the confluence of ever lower-power electronics and new understanding of microbial fuel cell design means that "soil-powered sensors" are now feasible. There remains, however, significant future work to make these systems reliable and maximally performant.

This demo is a working copy of the system presented at LP-IoT'21 [6].

References

[1]

J. H. Canfield, Goldner B. H., and R. Lutwack. 1963. Research on Applied Bioelectrochemistry, Report Nr. 1, Contract NASw-623, First Quartery Progress Report, March 14 to June 30, 1963. Technical Report. Magna Corporation, Washington, D.C., USA.

Google Scholar

[2]

Dhananjay Jagtap and Pat Pannuto. 2020. Reliable Energy Sources as a Foundation for Reliable Intermittent Systems. In Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Energy Harvesting and Energy-Neutral Sensing Systems (Virtual Event, Japan) (ENSsys '20). 22--28. https://doi.org/10.1145/3417308.3430276

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Colleen Josephson, Neal Jackson, and Pat Pannuto. 2020. Farming Electrons: Galvanic Versus Microbial Energy in Soil Batteries. IEEE Sensors Letters 4, 12 (2020), 1--4. https://doi.org/10.1109/LSENS.2020.3043666

Crossref

Google Scholar

[4]

Baikun Li, Karl Scheible, and Michael Curtis. 2011. Electricity Generation from Anaerobic Wastewater Treatment in Microbial Fuel Cells. Technical Report. The Water Environment Research Foundation.

Google Scholar

[5]

Bruce E. Logan, Bert Hamelers, René Rozendal, Uwe Schröder, Jürg Keller, Stefano Freguia, Peter Aelterman, Willy Verstraete, and Korneel Rabaey. 2006. Microbial Fuel Cells: Methodology and Technology. Environmental Science & Technology 40, 17 (2006), 5181--5192. https://doi.org/10.1021/es0605016 16999087.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[6]

Gabriel Marcano and Pat Pannuto. 2022. Soil Power? Can Microbial Fuel Cells Power Non-Trivial Sensors? In Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet-of-Things (New Orleans, LA, USA) (LP-IoT'21). 8--13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3477085.3478989

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Magical Microbes. 2021. MudWatt: Grow a Living Fuel Cell. https://www.magicalmicrobes.com/products/mudwatt-clean-energy-from-mud Accessed June 2021.

Google Scholar

[8]

Lukas Sigrist, Andres Gomez, Roman Lim, Stefan Lippuner, Matthias Leubin, and Lothar Thiele. 2016. RocketLogger - Mobile Power Logger for Prototyping IoT Devices. In 14th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems.

Google Scholar

[9]

Anthony J. Slate, Kathryn A. Whitehead, Dale A.C. Brownson, and Craig E. Banks. 2019. Microbial fuel cells: An overview of current technology. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 101 (2019), 60--81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2018.09.044

Crossref

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Hess-Dunlop AKakani HJosephson C(2024)Towards Deep Learning for Predicting Microbial Fuel Cell Energy OutputProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3674829.3675358(330-338)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674829.3675358
Yen BJaliff LGutierrez LSahinidis PBernstein SMadden JTaylor SJosephson CPannuto PShuai WWells GArora NHester J(2024)Soil-Powered ComputingProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314107:4(1-40)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631410

Index Terms

Powering an E-Ink Display from Soil Bacteria
1. Hardware
  1. Emerging technologies
    1. Analysis and design of emerging devices and systems
      1. Emerging architectures
  2. Power and energy
    1. Energy generation and storage
      1. Renewable energy
    2. Power estimation and optimization
      1. Platform power issues

Recommendations

Soil Power?: Can Microbial Fuel Cells Power Non-Trivial Sensors?
LP-IoT'21: Proceedings of the 1st ACM Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet-of-Things

This paper explores the power delivery potential of soil-based microbial fuel cells. We build a prototype energy harvesting setup for a soil microbial fuel cell, measure the amount of power that we can harvest, and use that energy to drive an e-ink ...
DoubleDip: leveraging thermoelectric harvesting for low power monitoring of sporadic water use
SenSys '12: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems

We present DoubleDip, a low power monitoring system for enabling non-intrusive water flow detection. DoubleDip taps into minute thermal gradients in pipes for both replenishing energy reserves and performing low power wakeup. One of the remaining issues ...
Powering the internet of things
ISLPED '14: Proceedings of the 2014 international symposium on Low power electronics and design

Various industry forecasts project that, by 2020, there will be around 50 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), helping to engineer new solutions to societal-scale problems such as healthcare, energy conservation, transportation, ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

SenSys '21: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems

November 2021

686 pages

ISBN:9781450390972

DOI:10.1145/3485730

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 November 2021

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Demonstration
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

SenSys '21

Sponsor:

SenSys '21: The 19th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems

November 15 - 17, 2021

Coimbra, Portugal

Acceptance Rates

SenSys '21 Paper Acceptance Rate 25 of 139 submissions, 18%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 174 of 867 submissions, 20%

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
141
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)25
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 16 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Hess-Dunlop AKakani HJosephson C(2024)Towards Deep Learning for Predicting Microbial Fuel Cell Energy OutputProceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3674829.3675358(330-338)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3674829.3675358
Yen BJaliff LGutierrez LSahinidis PBernstein SMadden JTaylor SJosephson CPannuto PShuai WWells GArora NHester J(2024)Soil-Powered ComputingProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/36314107:4(1-40)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631410

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Soil Power?: Can Microbial Fuel Cells Power Non-Trivial Sensors?

DoubleDip: leveraging thermoelectric harvesting for low power monitoring of sporadic water use

Powering the internet of things

Comments

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Other Metrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

PDF

eReader

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Soil Power?: Can Microbial Fuel Cells Power Non-Trivial Sensors?

DoubleDip: leveraging thermoelectric harvesting for low power monitoring of sporadic water use

Powering the internet of things

Comments

Information

Published In

Sponsors

Publisher

Publication History

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Conference

Acceptance Rates

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

eReader

Figures

Other

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations