to Power
By Sun News Publishing
Monday, August 22, 2005
Before you next flush the toilet,
consider this: Scientists in Singapore
have developed a battery powered
by urine.
Researchers at the Institute of
Bioengineering and Nanotechnology
created the credit card-size battery
as a disposable power source for
medical test kits.
Scientists have been scrambling to
create smaller, more efficient and
less expensive “biochips” to test for
diseases such as diabetes. Until
now, however, similarly small
batteries to power the devices
remained elusive.
Diagnostic test kits commonly
analyse the chemical composition of
a person’s urine to detect a malady.
Ki Bang Lee and his colleagues
realised that the substance being
tested – urine – could also power
the test.
“In order to address this problem,
we have designed a disposable
battery on a chip, which is activated
by biofluids such as urine,” Lee
wrote in an e-mail to National
Geographic News.
The research team describes the
battery in the current issue of the
Journal of Micromechanics and
Microengineering.
Daniel Kammen, director of the
Renewable and Appropriate Energy
Laboratory at the University of
California, Berkeley, said the
technology is a welcome innovation
in a time of rising energy prices.
“All jokes (about) urine aside, what
is needed are low-cost batteries. …”
he said. “The other neat thing about
this is the fact that it’s basically a
biodegradable battery.”
Urine Power
To make the battery, Lee and his
colleagues soaked a piece of paper
in a solution of copper chloride and
sandwiched it between strips of
magnesium and copper. This
sandwich was then laminated
between two sheets of transparent
plastic.
When a drop of urine is added to
the paper through a slit in the
plastic, a chemical reaction takes
place that produces electricity, Lee
said.
The prototype battery produced
about 1.5 volts, the same as a
standard AA battery and runs for
about 90 minutes. Researchers said
the power, voltage and lifetime of
the battery can be improved by
adjusting the geometry and
materials used.
Urine contains many ions,
(electrically charged atoms) which
allows the electricity-producing
chemical reaction to take place in the
urine battery, said UC Berkeley’s
Kammen. Other bodily fluids, such
as tears, blood and semen, would
work easily as well to activate the
battery.
“Little bags of urine may generate
chuckles,” Kammen said. “But really
urine is just a nice example (of) a
whole variety of compounds that
do this stuff.” Even children’s lunch-
box fruit-juice packets are sufficient,
he added.
Alternative Energy
While medical devices inspired the
urine battery, it can activate any
electric device with low power
consumption, according to Lee, the
battery’s co-inventor.
“For example, we can integrate a
small cell phone and our battery on
a plastic card. This can be activated
by body fluids, such as saliva,
during an emergency,” he said.
According to Kammen the
technology could even be applied to
laptop computers, mp3 players,
televisions and cars. Body-fluid-
powered batteries “can do all kinds
of things. The issue is how they
scale up” to produce more power,
he said.
One approach is to simply build
larger batteries. Another method is
to link lots of little battery cells side
by side, which is how the batteries
in laptop computers work, Kammen
explained.
Kammen, who advocates
government funding for alternative
energy research, says the wide
number of applications for cheap
and efficient biofluid-powered
batteries illustrates the value of
research. “Investigation leads to
innovation,” he said.
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