Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Back to EVOKE after a hard week of work, I'm now determined to make up the time I lost, and to work hard as the good agent I'm expected to be.

Sadly, I'm experiencing how hard it is, when remaining behind schedule, to find facts which were not already reported by other agents.
At first I choosed to talk about Desertec, as the idea involved Carlo Rubbia, an Italian Nobel Prize in Physics. That would have been a good example of ENTERPRENEURSHIP with LOCAL INSIGHT, but agent Jan Lampe already talked about it in a good post, which I'd suggest you to read: Sahara Solar Plant.
Then I thought I could publish something about human sourced electricity, but I found that many applications were already reported, beyond which there was always the same princilpe: (I'll be posting something about that as a secondary mission, though, because I think it is the most interesting solution, for short term design applications).
Finally, I remembered of something I posted on my ITgG blog about sugar batteries, a few years ago and I thought it would be nice to see if the idea developed further, and how.

When I wrote the article, researchers at Saint Louis University (lead by Shelley Minteer, who's my POWER PLAYER by now) had developed a fuel cell battery that ran on virtually any sugar source (from soft drinks to tree sap) and has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium ion batteries. Their study showed that renewable fuels can be directly employed in batteries at room temperature to lead to more energy-efficient battery technology than metal-based approaches. What was astonishing and encouraging about this research, unlike other fuel cells all of the materials used to build the sugar battery are biodegradable, demonstrating that a better battery that's also cleaner for the environment can be built, by bridging biology and chemistry.


The concept at the base of the sugar bio-batteries is, like other fuel cells, to use enzymes for converting fuel (in this case, sugar) into electricity, leaving behind water as a main byproduct. The principle is further explained in an article by Sony, where they presented their solution to power up an MP3 player.



I began searching around for more recent news and I must confess I found less than I expected; but researchers are still working on this, which probably means the idea is worthing even if it asks for longer times to be efficiently applied to common devices.

Sony itself presented a new prototype, on February 2009, at the International Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Expo (or FC Expo) as reported in Shinichi Kato's article on Tech-on. According to the article, this time Sony doubled the battery's output density per unit volume achieved by the previous model.


Also, young designer Daizi Zheng developed a concept for Nokia, where sugar batteries are adopted. On her prohject's webpage she writes:
conventional phone batteries are expensive, harmful to the environment and difficult to dispose of. In addition, the conventional battery manufacturing process consumes many valuable resources. [...] In order to use the bio-battery as a power source for the phone all that is required is a small supply of a sugary drink. Once the battery dies only oxygen and water remains.


Finally, as reported by inhabitots, toy manufacturer Tomy has developed a prototype model of a toy vehicle which runs on electric power generated from Sony's bio battery. At the Toy Forum in Tokyo, Jan the 19th 2010, a Tomy employee showed how the battery was fed a soft drink as its energy source. The toy can work on any sugary drink.

Conclusions to this research are not highly encouraging for short term applications: it is not realistic to feed up an MP3 player with batteries which are bigger than the music device itself.
By now, only very small devices (probably only gadgets and toys) can be fed up with sugar batteries. But on a long term, if acceptable efficiency rates will be reached, the outcomes for such a technology could be outstanding.

And maybe one day we could really see something like this happening:

Views: 509

Comment by Zaszo on March 22, 2010 at 4:27am
cool, had never heard about this before
Comment by Gilda Lorena Arias on March 23, 2010 at 12:44am
cool!!
Comment by Karen L. on March 26, 2010 at 1:57pm
Stefano! Well done. Very thorough post of vids and pics. If I could give you 50+ for knowledge share I would. I'm tweeting this one!
Comment by Evelyn on March 28, 2010 at 12:46am
Interesting, II think it is the same concept as the blog I posted about MFC and Beer Batteries, hmm, defineteley worth looking into, who knows with all the people working on nanotechnology making this micro may be very possible on the future.

Comment

You need to be a member of Urgent Evoke to add comments!

Join Urgent Evoke

Latest Activity

Ning Admin is now a member of Urgent Evoke
May 17, 2023
N updated their profile
Sep 25, 2020
Sophie C. commented on Asger Jon Vistisen's blog post Stinging Nettle
"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
Aug 19, 2020
Meghan Mulvey posted a blog post

Fourth of July on the Lake

This past weekend was the annual celebration at the lake house in Connecticut. It is amazing that the lake is still so clear and beautiful after all these years. The watershed association has done a wonderful job protecting these waters from the damaging effects of development.The wood grill was finally ready to cook on, so we didn't miss the propane tank fueled grill anymore. The food actually tasted fresher than in the past and was easy to keep fueled.Dad was very proud of the solar hybrid…See More
Jul 6, 2020
Asger Jon Vistisen posted a blog post

Stinging Nettle

In this blog post I will focus on a plant that is abundant in our nature, and which is immensely nutritious. It's of course the Stinging Nettle. Let's start with the chemical constituents of this plant:37 % Non-Nitrogen-Extracts19 - 29 % Ash9 - 21 % Fiber4 % Fat22 % ProteinOnce the leaves are drid, their protein content can reach an astounding 40 %, which is much higher than beef, which even under the best of circ**stances can never exceed 31 % protein. In addition the Stinging Nettle consists…See More
Apr 13, 2020
Jonathon McCallum posted a blog post

The meal

It is 7'oclock, I was late home from work due to an assignment that i wanted to get ahead on. By the time I get home I am feeling extremley tired and I cannot be bothered to make a proper meal. I walk to the fridge and open it to see what there is for me to eat. All of the out of date foodstuffs have been automaticaly thrown away by the fridge, they will be recycled tomorrow as animal feed or something. I see i have organic local eggs and some local cheese. Foods are vacc** sealded for easy…See More
Mar 10, 2020
Jean Paul Galea shared a profile on Facebook
Mar 1, 2020
Kevin posted a blog post

Future

FutureToday is 2020/1/1. It is just like yesterday. The war is still continuing. It has started since 2010. In 2010, that year was a horrible year. Almost every energy ran out. Every country’s governments were crushed down at the same time. There were riots everywhere. All of the big company’s bosses were killed xdeadx in the riots. Troops fought each other everywhere. Food was bought up xawayx at once. There were no more food supplies in any shops. The economy was all crushed down. All the…See More
Jan 1, 2020
Namwaka Mooto posted blog posts
Jan 13, 2016
T D updated their profile
Sep 3, 2015
Brook Warner posted blog posts
Aug 25, 2015
Santiago Vega posted blog posts
May 5, 2015
Santiago Vega commented on Santiago Vega's blog post Act 8
May 5, 2015
Santiago Vega posted photos
May 5, 2015
Rico Angel Rodriguez posted blog posts
May 2, 2015
Rico Angel Rodriguez posted a photo

public servants

The exchange works directly for state and public workers and servants. It gives them credit in exchange for the amount of public work they contribute to the community. The more constructive they are based off a base rate the more credit they recieve.
May 2, 2015

Follow EVOKE on Twitter




Official EVOKE Facebook Page




EVOKE RSS Activity Feed










© 2024   Created by Alchemy.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service