TechCrunch,
Sarah Buhr, May 31, 2014
In a small
lab, near a lake at the edge of West Berkeley, sits the prototype of what could
revolutionize battery power as we know it. The secret to this power? Algae.
OK, just
hang with me here. Lots of research has already been done on algae’s possible
power capabilities. Prototype creator Adam Freeman says this new kind of
battery, the one he’s working on, could power even a Tesla. And he says it
could do it 200X greater than the current lithium-based battery used today.
He’s
created a research company called alGAS that aims to prove just that.
Freeman
says the algae battery also charges faster and lasts longer than current ion
batteries used in, say, your cell phone, iPad… or a Tesla. As Freeman explains,
paper-thin fibers in algae provide an easier surface for ions to get through,
resulting in a charge in as little as 11 seconds, not minutes or hours.
Here is how
a current battery charges, using lots of rare earth minerals that may be going extinct or, worse, cause cancer:
Though
there isn’t much by way of illustration to show how this works for algae, Ryan
Bethencourt, founder of the Berkeley Biotech Labs, was able to send me this brief video that sort of explains the process.
Previous
tests proved algae has a charge and could theoretically work as battery power,
but what’s not known is how much of a charge and how much of it will be needed
to power, say, a car. Freeman believes he’s figured out the answer. What he
needs now is the funding to bring it into mass production.
Those rare
earth materials currently used in ion batteries (cell phones, etc.) — 95
percent of which are shipped from China — are hard to extract. This makes them
quite expensive.
Tesla
pledged to use U.S. materials only, which does cut the cost. Still, it’s got to
be more than what it costs to grow and use algae powered batteries, right?
Right. Freeman only needs $1,500 for the prototype and says he can have his
algae battery ready for mass production for a mere $5,000 by this summer.
The
implications for this go beyond cars. In theory you could power your entire
house. Yes, a living, breathing algae plant could make your house “go.” A
French biochemist already powered a streetlight with the stuff.
What makes
Freeman’s prototype different from previous tests is the use of a bio-safe
polymer. The polymer is a critical element that binds the fibers together to
create a better interaction with the electron charge.
While the
prototype is still basically just a bunch of jars full of algae on the shelf of
some lab, the potential, according to Freeman, is very big.
“Think of
driving your car on a living battery that charges in seconds with a battery
that costs almost nothing and is actually good for the environment.”
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