A review on the paper "The study of bio-electricity in plants and their application as power sources" by Yifan Xu, Danqin Feng, Jiangsu Tianyi High School

1. The Study of Bioelectricity on the Trees and
Their Applications as Power Sources
By
P. Venkata Sai Vamsi,
B.Tech 4th year, E.E,
IIT Indore.

2. What is Bioelectricity?
• Bioelectricity involves the electrical voltages and currents that are present in living tissues, their
causes and their consequences.
• When did the study of Bioelectricity began?
The study of bioelectricity started in early 1700’s by Galvani.
A portrayal from a famous
Japanese comic show

3. How is it different from the electricity of batteries?
What happens, when you throw a battery into the
ocean?
It corrodes
Just in contrast, what happens to a fish
(biological system)?
It will be fine

4. Bioelectricity – in human body

5. Jack, how old are you?

6. How does Jack’s communication system works?
• It is electrical and it is fast.
• It creates its own voltages, generate pulses, and propagates them from their source to their
destination.
• Their pulses carry information from one site to another.
• Bioelectric potentials  potentials produced by batteries
• Bioelectrical current – flow of ions.

7. How does the neuron’s work?
• Neurons conduct electrical impulses by using the Action Potential. This phenomenon is generated
through the flow of positively charged ions across the neuronal membrane.

8. Contd.

9. THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BANK

10. The Body Charger
• Enhances the bioelectrical and biochemical functions of cells by
saturating them with energy.
• The cell has an approximate electrical potential of 70 mill volts
(mV). An aged cell has 50 mV, and a diseased cell 15 mV.
• The Body Charger charges the cells, just like charging our cell
phones, thus increasing our body’s energy!

11. Electro Acupuncture

12. Bioelectricity – in plants
• Let us consider an old, famous experiment, making a battery out of potato.
• Potatoes are the nature’s version of battery acid.
• They are acidic in nature.

13. Study of Bioelectricity in Trees
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
found about sustained voltage differences of
around 200 mV between the nails inserted
into tree trunks and another electrodes
planted into the adjacent soil.
• It is due to simple pH difference between the
tree and the soil.

14. Paper focuses at…
• Studying the values of the electric potential
differences of trees and their variation during the
four seasons.
• Using that electric potential as a power resource for
low voltage devices such as wireless sensor network,
single-chip microcomputers and to provide them a
stable and reliable environment energy.
(a) broad-leaved tree
(left) and coniferous
tree (right)
(b) ginkgo tree

15. Measurement Method
• Insert the copper screws into the tree trunk and root, and plant
an iron screw into the surrounding soil.
• Measure the bioelectric current and voltage between trunk &
soil and root & soil.
• Measure the bioelectric current and voltage both in the trunk
and in the root for the three trees, along with environment
humidity and temperature.

16. Measurement results and analysis

17. Contd.
Measured for broad leaf tree.

18. Contd.
• Ginkgo has 600 ~ 800 mV voltage differences and 5 ~30 µA current.
• A broad-leaved tree has 500 ~ 750 mV voltage differences and 6 ~ 40 µA current.
• Coniferous tree has 350 ~ 700 mV voltage differences and 3 ~20 µA current.
• From the point view of using the bioelectricity of tree as power source, the broad-leaved tree may
be the most suitable tree species for the power source among the three trees, because it has both
larger voltage difference and current.

19. Application

20. Contd.

21. Preventing forest fires with tree power
• Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be
slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree.
• The system produces enough electricity to allow the temperature
and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a
day, or immediately if there's a fire. Each signal hops from one
sensor to another, until it reaches an existing weather station that
beams the data by satellite to a forestry command center

22. Conclusion’s from the paper
• The lower the temperature is, the smaller the bioelectric data of trees. The humidity has big
influence on current, the greater the humidity, the greater the current.
• Based on the measured bioelectricity data of the trees, the paper explored the technical proposal to
harvesting the energy from trees.
• Preliminary energy harvesting solution from trees energy sources to power a Microprocessor with a
Wireless Transmitter is proposed in the paper.