Earth Batteries

[Len Von Speedcult]

I read about earth batteries a while back and wondered, has anyone actually pulled any usuable voltage from the earth (soil) itself? The method I heard of utilizes a copper and zinc tube or rod pushed in the ground and tapped with wires. len

[drdongle]

It's been discussed here before, consensus is that it works but is not really usable.

[Norm]

  I've never tried it ...but I can imagine with

4 or 5 of these in series would really light up

quite a few white leds and would last for a long

time....but to upscale this large enough to be

independant of the grid would not be feasible IMO.

                  ( :>) Norm

[TomW]

Len;

Did I mention the Rods are consumed and that it likely requires more to create those than it will ever extract by galvanic corrosion. What happens when the ph of the soil gets altered significantly enough that the process stops?

Hardly "renewable" energy. It does come up occasionally but I don't believe we have seen anyone actually using one for any useful purpose. Just another toy and science trick but certainly not a true storage device more of a one time source and not quite renewable.

Just the view from here.

A google search yielded a lot of info including my statements earlier in this comment and, no, I did not even look at wikipedia.

Anyway, good luck and please report back any outcomes of attempting this. Always good to have some Macguyver tricks up your sleeve if you get shipwrecked on a deserted island with a container of copper and zinc plated wire, a flat battery and a shortwave radio.

T

[thefinis]

I had a friend who tried this but could never get any usable currect out of it. He quickly found out that in an alky soil and dry region that it would only work if he watered the ground and then it just barely showed any current. It would really perk up if you poured vinegar on it. I forget how many feet of copper and zinc it was going to take to make 12v but the $ didn't add up. He found that he could make acid batteries cheaper and didn't have to dig in the dirt. He gave up and is trying to make hydrogen now with about the same luck by the time he buys parts etc it is cheaper to buy gas or diesel. Trying to beat the oil and electric companies at their own game is hard.

There was some info on how the telegraph lines because of earth battery effect would often generate their own power especially on long streaches.

Finis

[Infinity Steel]

The problem I can see with this is that you'd get more juice out of a simple plastic barrel with some vinegar and electrodes in it.......something that happens by the galvanic action of metals being consumed by acids or alkalines is only sustainable for so long.....up to the saturation point.

 And then, what do you do about metals you have introduced into the ground water?

 I see this on about the same level as sticking electrodes into a potato-sure it works-weakly......then ruins the potato as food. Nice parlor trick-poor in actual theory.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

All your power would be coming from the corrosion of the electrodes, which in turn came from the refining process.  You're only using the soil in place of the electrolyte - inefficiently - and massively contaminating the ground with zinc, its cadmium impurity, and some copper ions in the process.

You'd be ahead to use a bucket of lye solution and avoid the leakage between your cells.  Or better yet just buy some ordinary use-once-throw-away classic carbon-zinc batteries, which have the lye solution as a conveniently-packaged paste and a depolarizing compound around the central rod so the cell doesn't get all resistive and lossy from hydrogen bubbles around the positive electrode when in use for more than a couple minutes.

Just because you're using the earth as one of the components doesn't mean your extracting any power from it.