NEW YORK: -Kaia, a portable smartphone charger harnesses energy from plants for charging the smartphone
An engineering trio has created a novel smartphone charger “E-Kaia” that takes energy from plants for charging the smartphone.
Plants are the main source of Oxygen. Well, three engineering students, Evelyn Aravena, Camila Rupcich and Carolina Guerrero have further proved that energy from single plant can also be harnessed to provide power for charging smartphone that would remove the need for electric power supply!!
It was in 2009, when these girls came up with an innovative idea of creating a smartphone charger that would work without electric power supply. At that time the girls were still in university at Duoc UC in Valparaíso and the Andres Bello National University, Chile.
Netherlands already uses the technology of utilizing living plants for generating electricity and this project is known as Plant-e; however the major difference between E-Kaia and Plant-e is that E-Kaia requires only one healthy plant while Plant-e requires many plants to harness the required energy.
Basically, one needs to bury a bio-circuit in a plant pot which has a healthy plant. The outputs of this bio circuit needs to be lead out of the soil. With this circuit one can harvest about 5 Volts and 6 milliamps that can be converted into electrical energy without damaging the plant. The electric power generated has the potential to charge the smartphone in about one and half hours as per the inventors of E-Kaia.
