Common bricks converted to batteries £0.50 each.

[harry]

[Vir Campestris]

The Daily Fail isn't a good source. But Nature is

Also New Scientist

Which has some figures. Each brick costs 2-3USD to make, and isn't fit for building with!

Andy

[polygonum_on_google]

I thought it quite funny that they use Epoxy and PVA to make them. I suppose flour-and-water paste would be hoping for too much but there might be room for some polyurethane, superglue, even car body filler to stick them together.

[Andy Bennet]

"A brick would have more energy than a AA battery, but a AA battery is incredibly inexpensive,? says D?Arcy" "They store enough energy that three small bricks, each about 4 x 3 x 1 centimetre in size, could power a green LED light for about 10 minutes on a single charge"

UMM - The average AA battery could run a green LED for more than 10 days at 10mA current ... LOL

[Chris Hogg]

Dunno what all the fuss is about. It's just green silliness. You can make a battery out of a potato. So what are we going to have in the future - fields of potatoes powering the grid?

[alan_m]

I have 4 AAA batteries powering 2 LEDS for 3+ months.

[Jethro_uk]

The absence of straw as a building material remains a mystery ...

[Chris Hogg]

Just wait...someone will discover that if you take a really damp bale of straw, stick a copper nail in one end and a galvanised nail in the other, you can run an LED off it for ages, maybe even longer...

[Max Demian]

What do they do with all the straw, if the beasts don't eat it? What happens to the leaves of cereal crops?

[Tim Streater]

Round here it was baled and went off on a big trailer. Handly for the local dobbins, I would imagine.

[The Natural Philosopher]

beasts never ate it anyway. Its more stalks than leaves actually

does grass have 'leaves'?

Some goes for bedding Some is burnt at Drax as 'biofuel' The rest is simply ploughed back in Its a very low value difficult to transport material.

[Tim Lamb]

Please don't start Tim off!

As TNP says, anything not required is chopped as it leaves the combine and ploughed in to maintain soil organic matter.

>

[T i m]

;-)

Yup, self fertilising, like the old 'crop rotation system' we learnt about at school. ;-)

Doesn't work in the Amazon though because the soil / environment is so acid and so will only really support the vegetation that was there already (No! who would have thought). ;-)

So we want to stop growing food to feed livestock and grow it for ourselves instead, then we would need less of it.

And given most people on a 'healthy and balanced diet' will have fruit and veg make up at least 2/3rds of their intake, most people are already more vegi than carnivore. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Max Demian]

It has blades, which may or may not be leaves botanically. I shall have to observe the local wheat while it is growing and ripening.

[Roger Hayter]

Round here they import straw from miles away, I think for some cattle bedding related purpose.

[Vir Campestris]

My roof is made of straw.

We expect to have to replace it every 25 years. At the outside.

The rest of the house his 300 years old.

OK, so it's rather more exposed, but even so...

There's also the point that walls as thick as a straw bale would use a lot of space. Space that is very expensive in the UK.

Andy