There is a call to go green everywhere but it can be a challenge to make all things eco-efficient and environment-friendly. The thought of being “green” all the way can be difficult because some supplies are still expensive. For three engineers from Chile, they knew that something as simple but hi-tech such as a phone charger can be greener than ever. These three Chilean engineers thought of getting energy from plants and they recently achieved success after six years of hardcore research and work.
These engineers started the project called E-Kaia to build a portable device that uses residual energy of plants. The idea was to use the energy produced during photosynthesis and turn it into electrical energy for many different purposes someday. There was a similar project before but it required at least 100 square meters of plants just to generate electricity to charge one single smartphone. However, with E-Kaia, that has changed as it only need one plant to extract enough energy.
The process is not as complicated. Residual vegetable energy captured by a biocircuit buried with outputs to the surface. It doesn’t produce damage to the plants even after reaching 5 volts and 600 milliampers. With this, a phone can have extra juice or battery within 1.5 hours. Technology details are not made public but the basic idea is residual energy is turned into electrical energy during photosynthesis.
This project by the three engineers have gained recognition the past years. It received the Avonni National Award to Innovation of 2014 and received funds from the Jump Chile 2013.
The team isn’t done yet with the project and it’s studying the way of “providing even more energy, since the initial prototype is for low consumption devices only” but there is a potential for bigger devices or areas to be self-sufficient, as well as, bring the technology to places with limited access to electricity by proving a bigger energetic solution.
VIA: Manquehue
