Power from pH Difference

[SK500]

Hi All,

I came across this website (voltreepower.com) and these guys are using the pH difference between the tree and the Soil to generate enough power to essentially run “a network of fire alarms”.

This got me wondering, are there any industrial applications to this, for example in a waste plant, where they deal with very concentrated solutions. Are these differences in pH enough to generate power?

I will be researching this a bit more, and I’ll post any useful links. Thanks, let me know what you guys think!

 

[bimr]

The voltree site does not appear to state how the device works.

Probably is the same technology as a potato battery:

http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/potato_battery.jpg

Cut the potato in half. Wrap the end of a piece of wire around a galvanized nail and wrap the end of a second piece of wire around a penny. Stick the copper side into one piece of potato and the nail into the other. The zinc and copper electrodes should not touch each other. If a wire is connected between the Zinc nail and the copper penny, electrons will flow. However, direct contact of the two electrodes will only produce heat.

Electric current is the movement of electrons from one atom to another in a conductor. Inserting the two common metal electrodes into the potato causes a chemical reaction to occur resulting in current. The potato does not participate directly in the reaction. It is there rather as an electrolyte to facilitate the transport of the zinc and copper ions in the solution, while keeping the copper and zinc electrodes apart. The potato contains phosphoric acid (H3PO4), which facilitates the electro-chemical reaction of zinc with copper.

Zinc is an active metal, which reacts readily with acid to liberate electrons. The acid's active ingredient is positively charged hydrogen, so a transfer of electrons takes place between the zinc and the acid. The zinc (Zn0) is oxidized (Zn++ ) and the acid (H+) is reduced to hydrogen gas (H2), which you can see bubbling out around the electrodes. The reaction at the penny electrode depletes the electrons from the copper and attaches them to the hydrogen ions in the phosphoric acid.