Team:Hong Kong-CUHK/Project electricity

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Electricity generation

From salinity to electricity

A novel nano-electrode has been proposed by Fablo. et. el that electrical energy can be generated by alternating salinity difference. With the materials sponsored from companies in mainland China in surprisingly large quantities, we have reproduced a even larger electrode (in surface area) with ease. With this at hand, we can turn salinity difference from bacterial action to electrical energy we can use.

The graph above showed the voltage variation of our cell against time.

From the graph above, it is clear that the voltage generated from the cell culture cannot power up any daily electronic device.

We are accumulating power from this device.

An IC manufactured by Seiko, S-882Z, is a voltage booster that accepts input voltage down to 0.3V. This IC is produced through fully-depleted Silicon-On-Insulator technology that enables such low voltage input. The output is 1.8V/100uA; this voltage is used to charge up a super-capacitor. The supercapacitor can act as a voltage source for dc-dc converters, provide up to 5V for low-power device applications.