It's a potential power source. The green glop that forms in fetid pools and in nutrient soaked ground fed by overflowing septic systems increasingly is being investigated for properties beyond the "ugh" factor.
At Stanford University, a team of scientists has figured a way to extract a tiny portion of electrical current from algae cells. Gwyneth Dickey at the Stanford News Service wrote that the team was "able to draw from each cell just one picoampere, an amount of electricity so tiny that they would need a trillion cells photosynthesizing for one hour just to equal the amount of energy stored in a AA battery."
The power comes from photosynthesis, the process through which a plant converts sunlight to energy.
Dickey quoted WonHyoung Ryu, the lead author of the paper published in the March issue of Nano Letters, as saying he believes the Stanford team is the first to extract electrons from living plant cells. However, Ryu said there is a long way to go to put such power generation to any commercial use. "We're still in the scientific stages," he said.
However, in Nano Letters, he offered a more effusive account: "This result may represent an initial step in generating 'high efficiency' bioelectricity by directly harvesting high energy photosynthetic electrons."
