{"id":181420,"date":"2024-01-26T10:23:12","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T16:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/new-fuel-cell-harvests-energy-from-microbes-in-soil-to-power-sensors-communications"},"modified":"2024-01-26T10:23:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T16:23:12","slug":"new-fuel-cell-harvests-energy-from-microbes-in-soil-to-power-sensors-communications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/new-fuel-cell-harvests-energy-from-microbes-in-soil-to-power-sensors-communications","title":{"rendered":"New Fuel Cell Harvests Energy from Microbes in Soil to Power Sensors, Communications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-fuel-cell-harvests-energy-from-microbes-in-soil-to-power-sensors-communications.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Northwestern University-led team of researchers has developed a new fuel cell that harvests energy from microbes living in dirt.<\/p>\n<p>About the size of a standard paperback book, the completely soil-powered technology could fuel underground sensors used in precision agriculture and green infrastructure. This potentially could offer a sustainable, renewable alternative to batteries, which hold toxic, flammable chemicals that leach into the ground, are fraught with conflict-filled supply chains and contribute to the ever-growing problem of electronic waste.<\/p>\n<p>To test the new fuel cell, the researchers used it to power sensors measuring soil moisture and detecting touch, a capability that could be valuable for tracking passing animals. To enable wireless communications, the researchers also equipped the soil-powered sensor with a tiny antenna to transmit data to a neighboring base station by reflecting existing radio frequency signals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Northwestern University-led team of researchers has developed a new fuel cell that harvests energy from microbes living in dirt. About the size of a standard paperback book, the completely soil-powered technology could fuel underground sensors used in precision agriculture and green infrastructure. This potentially could offer a sustainable, renewable alternative to batteries, which hold [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,1506,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-chemistry","category-food","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}