Heard of a battery that consumes sugar and can run your smartphone for 10 days? This bio-battery may soon become a reality.
Researchers
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known
as Virginia Tech, have designed a new bio-battery with a greater output
per weight than the typical lithium-ion batteries used in most
electronics.
A bio-battery converts sugar into energy - much like
our metabolism - decomposing sugar into carbon dioxide and water while
releasing electrons.
"By using the lithium-ion battery, for
example, your phone can only last for one day. In the future, it would
use sugar as the fuel. Then the phone could last 10 days," explained
Zhiguang Zhu, a researcher at Virginia Tech.
The new bio-battery
fully converts sugar into energy, which means more power output than
previous bio-batteries and a greater battery charge than common
lithium-ion batteries.
The new bio-battery gets its efficiency by
using a novel system of enzymes which are proteins that help the
reaction to take place.
The system uses two active enzymes that
liberate two pairs of electrons from the sugar while 10 other enzymes
help to reset the reaction inside the bio-battery.
Once the reaction is reset, the active enzymes release another quartet of electrons.
After six cycles, the bio-battery extracts all of the energy bound in the sugar molecule along with carbon dioxide and water.
However,
scientists would have to overcome a few more challenges on the
engineering side before bio-batteries are put into commercial use, said a
paper
published online in the journal Nature Communications.
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Further reading:
Batteries,
Battery,
Development,
Mobiles,
Research,
Study,
Sugar,
Sugar Battey,
Virginia,
Virginia Tech,
Virginia University,
lithium-ion,
lithium-ion battery
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