Notably, small amounts of organics were detected in the experiment performed in thermodynamically spontaneous conditions under no external electrochemical induction (Table , entries 5 and 6). In this experiment, two mineral-coated iron pieces are directly connected by an electron-conductive wire, without the mediation of the potentiostat (Figure ), thus only pH and redox gradients are acting. The fact that the formic acid and acetic acid yields in these spontaneous conditions are closest to those with an applied nanoamp current, suggests that in this passive system, a nanoamp current may be all that is passing through the mineral mediators.