Mobile World Congress: An innovator harnesses power from indoor plants

Flowers are an embodiment of beauty but now they can generate power too.
At the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, among a host of innovations exhibited on solar solutions and energy conservation stands out a project native to Barcelona by entrepreneur Pablo Vidarte called Bioo.

The company has developed a technology to generate and capture bioenergy from decomposition under plant soil that can be stacked in landscaping both indoors and outdoors.

The power generated is not adequate for large consumption – around 15 watts per day on an area of 7 square metres – but coupled with the savings in the form of recycled irrigation and temperature management the beneficial impact can be multifold.

Bioo has received grants worth four million euros from the European Union to complete research and commercialise products. The investment in Bioo, including private funding, has so far totalled seven million euros and the company is now looking to raise another five million euros for the next round of growth, said Vidarte.

The solution still comes at a high capital expenditure cost, which in an optimal situation would take 10 years to generate a return.

How it works

The cell consists of four layers. At the bottom is a metal-infused material that collects the electrons to store a battery, which the company calls biopanel.

On top of it is a special substrate (soil-like material) composite developed by Bioo, in which microorganisms found naturally in soil and air multiply under low oxygenated conditions. The multiplication process releases electrons and hydrogen atoms in this layer.

The electrons are then drawn to the lower layer while the hydrogen atoms react with the limited oxygen to form water. The third layer is a carbon sponge that absorbs moisture and ensures that the oxygenation of the substrate remains low. Finally, at the top is ordinary soil with plants, or even moss, growing in it.

“You can place any kind of fertile soil on top. It will always have those microorganisms. They will always have it in different concentrations, but that's not really a problem because here (in the substrate), they will grow and reach the same number,” said Vidarte.

As the plants are watered at the surface, microorganisms seep from the upper layer into the substrate, triggering decomposition that generates electricity.

The water that is produced as a byproduct of the reaction reduces the need to irrigate the top layer by as much as 50 percent. Another outcome of the reaction is temperature control. The reaction during the growth of microorganisms helps change the room temperatures as much as four degrees – cooler in the summer and warmer in winter. “We are actually able to reduce up to 20 percent of the expenses for air conditioning,” said Vidarte.

Lastly, the solution can purify the air in a room without opening windows with just 10 percent of the room’s area covered with this solution.

A pilot of the technology has already been initiated at UK’s Eden Project in Cornwall.

How it came to be

Vidarte says he literally dreamt Bioo into existence. Sometime in 2014, he woke up at 3 am to “a really cool dream.” It was the inception of the idea to solve the pollution problem using a biological battery. The basic technology had existed for over 70 years but had never been feasible because it required sterile conditions.

That set Vidarte to form a team of biotech and nanotech engineers to design a product that could sustain in an open-to-air environment. “Instead of fighting contamination by external microorganisms, which by the way, it's the most natural thing, we joined forces with the enemy. What we did was to build a home for the most ideal microorganisms that were pre-existing in any kind of park and garden.”

The second big challenge was industrialisation. This meant ensuring that the microorganisms remain self-sustaining without too much human intervention.