Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 4Charging and Operating
Okay now that we've got our two carbon paper electrodes cut out and the anode positioned We take our Jello out of the fridge and cut a square approximately 3 inches on a side.
Place that more or less carefully on top of the anode assembly. Now place the other piece of carbon paper on top of the Jello square. This is the cathode.
Attach one lead from your MM to the anode lead, attach the other to the cathode. As you can see in the intro picture I got an initial reading of approximately 500 mV which has subsequently dropped to about 280 mV on an open circuit.
You will notice that this ubiquitous green Jello just looks the part, don't it?
Plus, you know, it's really a green project...
Place that more or less carefully on top of the anode assembly. Now place the other piece of carbon paper on top of the Jello square. This is the cathode.
Attach one lead from your MM to the anode lead, attach the other to the cathode. As you can see in the intro picture I got an initial reading of approximately 500 mV which has subsequently dropped to about 280 mV on an open circuit.
You will notice that this ubiquitous green Jello just looks the part, don't it?
Plus, you know, it's really a green project...
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
:D
Thanks for your instructibles. I've only recently gotten into Bioelectricity and didn't realize harvesting it could be done so simply and easily...
Besides the green jello looking the part I think that the lime flavoring (probably citric or ascorbic acid) served as your electrolyte. You didn't mention adding salt or any other electrolyte to the medium so did you luck out there or do the trace minerals which are there to feed the yeast serve a double purpose as ions? ... just wondering what conducts in the solid medium...
BTW, here in the Philippines they still sell reams of carbon paper at office supply stores. I'm not sure what it costs now but maybe it would be cheaper than ordering from a specialty online supplier. Several reams through surface mail shouldn't cost that much if you plan to make a jello fuel cell battery to power your TV...lol
I thought about using CP for electrode material some years back but I thought the greasy binder would render it non conductive and wasn't going to buy a whole ream just to find out it was an insulator or had 1 megaohm resistance...haha
In my electrochemistry work I use carbon cloth. Suppliers from China will give you a first time free sample of several square feet (and theirs is *Activated* carbon cloth...). I actually make standard carbonized fabric in the lab by heating denim or felt, etc. in the absence of oxygen...This gives a much greater surface area which will boost your Amps tremendously (and for an immobile fuel cell like your double tee junction pipe one, the CC's structural duradility should be adequate). Well, this is becoming an essay...more comments on other posts...Thanks again and Keep working for the Cause!
cheers--cj
My Organic Chemistry is pretty bad but I can say that if either of the two acids was serving as the electroluyte (and I can't imagine anything else in your cell that could have been) their ionic form in "jello solution" were your electrolyte ion transport molecules. More interesting to me is the green dye and if it is indeed a facilitator that is non-toxic. In any case, you can confirm if the lime flavor was the electrolyte by using jello without any flavoring (or any ionic compounds) or by using agar that is non-conductive as well. If your plain jello/agar cell gives almost no power you'll know it was an ingreduient in the lime jello. Try adding salt to both your lime cell and the plain one. the lime one may get a power boost and I'm sure the salt in the plain one will make it work (since it now has an electrolyte).
I've just gone through a reformat so I don't have a URL for you but all the companies I ordered from do business on Alibaba.com. A search there or on Google for activated carbon cloth will yield many companies that will ship a free sample. I didn't pay for the shipping because I pulled out the "poor" card--as well as saying that I will be ordering huge amounts if their stuff lived up to their claimed specs. (Both my negotiation tactics are true, BTW...) But since you know how to make carbonized materials (wouldn't do it in your barbie though--chemicals and all in food...etc...) I wouldn't bother even paying for the shipping. They claim over 1000 square meters surface area per gram for the 3mm stuff I got--I just didn't see it act like that in the lab though; it also has bad conductivity unless compressed. Now that I know that my own carbon cloth works just as well and that carbon paper works too I'm shifting to those as electrodes.
You mentioned electron microscope carbon mesh. I haven't come across that. From which instructable was it? If it's doped with electrocatalysts that would make it even better!
Cheers!
:)
The optimum configuration would be use an array of MFCs to feed a battery charger and use the recharged batteries to drive the light. The MFC generate power continuously at low levels, by using a rechargebable battery you can "compress" the stored power to a usable voltage.
You can construct an easy test bed using one of those solar powered yard lights. Simply remove the top and clip the leads to the solar panel then attach the leads from your MFC array.
Check out my http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Wire-Batteries-in-Series-or-in-Parallel for information on wiring the array.
Newly, i also incorporated an solar panel to run the pumps and installed an Lithium Mobile battery charger to charge your phone from ALGAE?!
I would expect this to reliably produce between 30-80 mA until the jello breaks down enough to short it out.