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The Science Behind Firecrackers and Sparklers. These ionic solutions are called electrolytes and can be found in every living thing. Because of this, technically, any fruit or vegetable could become an ionic conductor, but some are better at it than others.
This is also why salt water or unfiltered tap water are better ionic conductors than filtered fresh water. The best food battery is any fruit or vegetable that has high levels of superconductive ions, such as potassium or sodium, and the proper internal structure to create a working current. Potatoes, which have homogenous structures, and pickles, which have high levels of sodium and acidity, are good examples of such foods. For an extra electrical "oomph," you can soak your potato in salt water before setting up the potato battery experiment, Hickner said.
In contrast, tomatoes have unorganized, messy insides and often leak, and even an orange — which has high levels of potassium — won't work well, because the flesh of the fruit is divided into internal compartments, and these create barriers that block the current, Paul Takhistov, an associate professor of food engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told Live Science.
Some fruits and vegetables may be chock-full of superconductive ions, but you'll need a few more materials to turn these foods into batteries.
The oranges are often squashed underfoot or by the wheels of cars, leaving streets sticky with juice and swarms of flies. In February , a new pilot scheme was announced to put this waste fruit to use, rather than simply chucking them all into a landfill. The fruit is gathered up and taken to a municipal water company, Emasesa , which generates clean energy from it to run one of its water purification plants.
The juice is extracted, combined with other organic matter, and used to produce biogas, while the peels are being composted and transformed into fertilizer for fields. It is hoped that the scheme could eventually be extended to supply surplus electricity to the national grid too. According to the team behind the initiative, with some more investment and upscaling, otherwise wasted oranges from the city could be used to power as many as 73, homes.
That is based on trials using 1, kg 2, lbs of oranges that could be used to generate 50 kWh of electricity -- enough to power five homes for a single day. Rotting oranges are not the only way to produce methane gas, obviously. This plant turns discarded or unwanted fruit and vegetables into thermal and electrical energy. Like in Seville, Spain, this waste would otherwise be dumped into a landfill. Their biogas plant has been so successful that it was even recently connected to the national grid.
The plant works much the same as the stomachs rumens of a cow. Biomass is fed in, and methane gas comes out. Corn spillage, pumpkin waste, and other organic material are ground up, placed inside an anaerobic digester, and left to turn into a soupy liquid.
Within the digester, bacteria's sets convert the waste into volatile fatty acids and then into methane gas. This gas then bubbles up through the soup and is collated at the top. From here, it is fed into an internal combustion engine that can burn it to generate electricity. Because the digester runs on a completely natural process, it can work continuously so long as new biomass is added.
According to its owners, once the plant is fully operational, it could be able to produce twice the power needs of the farm -- enough to power 1, homes. A similar process is also used by a company called Gills Onions in Oxnard, California. A fresh-onion puree producer, around , kg , pounds of waste onion solids are used to produce renewable energy. By feeding this onion waste into an anaerobic digester, methane gas is produced, which can then be burned to power kilowatt fuel cells, which provide enough electricity to power homes.
Whether you simply wire up an existing piece of fruit or build a more sophisticated piece of apparatus, fruit has some genuine applications beyond just eating it, Or, indeed, throwing it away.
The use of technologies like anaerobic digesters might just be the ticket for reducing filling up landfills and releasing the very potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere. Why waste it? By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
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