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In the quest for alternative, small-scale energy producing technology, one company has invented a device that can power electronics with something you’ve been just flushing down the toilet all this time–your pee. The portable, pee-powered battery, called MetalCell, can create enough of a charge to power a laptop for over four hours. The technology, while seeming to be modern, is actually reminiscent of an electricity producing method used close to 2 thousand years ago.

According to Popular Science, the battery was designed by a South Korean company for military situations where it may be hard to find power for electronic gadgets. It’s small enough to be transported easily and can produce energy to run equipment when no other sources are available.

Aside from urine, the MetalCell can produce electricity with just saltwater. Inside the battery are magnesium plates which react with sodium to generate a small amount of electricity. A report on the MetalCell’s capabilities says the chemical reaction may be a more convenient power generating method other methods are unavailable:

The device, known as MetalCell, is a backup power source that runs on sodium and can keep a laptop charged for more than four hours, its maker says. The design is relatively simple: a small, ruggedized box with magnesium plates inside. If an electrical gadget — anything from a computer to a flashlight — runs out of energy, a soldier on the battlefield could pour saltwater into the MetalCell and use the device as an emergency power source.

This method of producing a small amount of electricity resembles technology that dates back to nearly 2 thousand years. An artifact was discovered bearing similar qualities that may have been used to generate low-level voltage. Known as Baghdad Batteries, terracotta jars were found containing a copper cylinder and an iron rod that some believe could produce electricity when an acidic substance, like lemon juice, was added.

Just how much electricity the MetalCell can produce, and how readily available the materials needed to make are, could determine its viability in non-military applications. While it may not be superior to renewable sources like wind or solar generated power for long term energy needs, this pee-powered device could be an alternative in the future–or for when nature calls.

This tech has been around for a while (2000 years apparently) but we are just learning how to utilize it again. So now we have wind power, solar power and PEE POWER! Explain THAT to Captain Planet. In all seriousness this is some pretty cool sh**, there is a similar pee power story by National Geographic below.

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 analyze the chemical composition of a person’s urine to detect a malady. Ki Bang Lee and his colleagues realized 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.

Reported in National Geographic News back in 2005

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Geek, News, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.