Scientists develop battery that uses sugar to generate electricity
03 Mar 2014
A new battery developed by scientists generates electricity from sugar. The battery generates enough power to run a smart phone for 10 days at a time.
The bio-battery designed by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University delivers greater output per weight than the typical lithium-ion batteries that power most electronics.
The prototype version could lead to development of lighter and more powerful batteries than the ones typically found in today's portable electronic devices, including smartphones.
In the body, sugar gets converted to energy through a process called metabolism, which decomposes sugar into carbon dioxide and water even as it releases electrons.
The same conversion process is used in bio-batteries to capture the electrons that are generated in the decomposition of sugar with the same tools that are used by the body.
Biologically based materials which are renewable and non-toxic are used in bio-batteries, which make them an attractive alternative to traditional batteries that need metals and chemicals to operate.
According to Zhiguang Zhu, a researcher at Virginia Tech, by using the lithium-ion battery, for example the charge on ones' phone can only last for one day, but it would be possible to use sugar in future to charge the phone for 10 days.
The new bio-battery owes its efficiency to a novel system of enzymes that are proteins that help the reaction to take place.
The system uses two active enzymes that liberate two pairs of electrons from the sugar even as 10 other enzymes help to reset the reaction inside the bio-battery.
On resetting the reaction, the active enzymes release another quartet of electrons. The bio-battery extracts all of the energy bound in the sugar molecule along with carbon dioxide and water in six cycles.
However, a few engineering challenges need to be overcome first, before before bio-batteries can enter commercial use, according to a paper published online in the journal Nature Communications.