New Energy Source ?

Unbelievable.

Urine Battery Turns Pee Into Power

John Roach

for National Geographic News

August 18, 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 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.

 

Urine is one of a number of bodily fluids rich in ions—electrically charged atoms. Researchers in Singapore leveraged this fact to produce a credit card-size battery (bottom) powered by urine. The device produces about 1.5 volts, the same as a standard AA battery, and can last for 90 minutes.

Found at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0818_050818_urinebattery.html

seriously someone make me a car that runs on piss.

seriously someone make me a car that runs on piss.

no kidding!

They got the same for fecal matter as well.

They got the same for fecal matter as well.

no shit? really? holy crap, thats the shit. oh poop ive run out of doody puns.

I imagine the urine one would be more effective as people dont have bm as frequent.

They got the same for fecal matter as well.

 

no shit? really? holy crap, thats the shit. oh poop ive run out of doody puns.

 

I imagine the urine one would be more effective as people dont have bm as frequent.

Ya they do. As a matter of fact, there is this one museum in france I believe where they want to or they do, not sure which, to get peoples fecal matter to power it and they can get in for free.

I like this waste reuse approach, no more landfills for them. Thing is, the whole sewer system would need to be reworked, and how long would that take? Also the smell from it when it is used.

I totally think we should fuel cars off of our own waste. whether it be urine, fecal, or gas from our landfills, compost piles, etc.

waste has such a great energy potential, we just need to tap into it.

also what about when your car is stopped? thats totally wasting energy, theres gotta be some way to use inertia, and store it up in some sort of mechanism...like a gear or something.

I totally think we should fuel cars off of our own waste. whether it be urine, fecal, or gas from our landfills, compost piles, etc.

 

waste has such a great energy potential, we just need to tap into it.

 

 

also what about when your car is stopped? thats totally wasting energy, theres gotta be some way to use inertia, and store it up in some sort of mechanism...like a gear or something.

Inertia states an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion, that is if theres no outside factors. How would it play in a car that is stopped?

Also, thats why things are rarely, if ever, waste. It is just a different form.

theres gotta be some way to use inertia, and store it up in some sort of mechanism...like a gear or something.

That's the principle behind hybrids, they convert forward momentum (when met with a resistance force from braking) into electrical energy

I totally think we should fuel cars off of our own waste. whether it be urine, fecal, or gas from our landfills, compost piles, etc.

There's people working on that too. It's really cool stuff. There's a fuel cell power plant in Connecticut that is powered by landfill gas. See this article - http://www.epa.gov/appcdwww/apb/biomass.htm

theres gotta be some way to use inertia, and store it up in some sort of mechanism...like a gear or something.

 

That's the principle behind hybrids, they convert forward momentum (when met with a resistance force from braking) into electrical energy

ahh okay cool. thats what i was thinking about. I remember working on a project similar to that back in highschool. I really had no idea how a hybrid worked til now.

theres gotta be some way to use inertia, and store it up in some sort of mechanism...like a gear or something.

 

That's the principle behind hybrids, they convert forward momentum (when met with a resistance force from braking) into electrical energy

I thought he was stating when the object is at rest? This is why I didnt understand how inertia could play into it?

sorry koll, Im not the best at typing out what I mean. Im horrible with grammar and english.

sorry koll, Im not the best at typing out what I mean. Im horrible with grammar and english.

Ah its cool mate. You speak any other languages bro?

sorry koll, Im not the best at typing out what I mean. Im horrible with grammar and english.

 

Ah its cool mate. You speak any other languages bro?

haha no not really. pretty much after I got done with all my honors english classes (graduated highschool), I completely forgot how to form proper sentences, and everything, and went back to my snowboard slang and horrid sentence structure.

I was semi-fluent in spanish due to taking 3-4 yrs of it in HS, and my best friend being puerto-rican, but I dont get much practice with spanish any more.

I also know a lil Polish cause of my mom's relatives. simple phrases like "give me a kiss" and some really long song.

and sign language cause of my sister (handicaped) and mom (teaches handicapped preschool).

and I started teaching myself japanese, but decided to stop until I can learn it in a classroom.

back in HS, I took one of those ASVAB tests and apparently I can learn languages twice as fast as the "average" person. (same for math). but I have yet to put my ability to the test.... a main reason I want to try to take classes on japanese.

what about you? do you speak any other languages?

sorry koll, Im not the best at typing out what I mean. Im horrible with grammar and english.

 

Ah its cool mate. You speak any other languages bro?

 

haha no not really. pretty much after I got done with all my honors english classes (graduated highschool), I completely forgot how to form proper sentences, and everything, and went back to my snowboard slang and horrid sentence structure.

 

I was semi-fluent in spanish due to taking 3-4 yrs of it in HS, and my best friend being puerto-rican, but I dont get much practice with spanish any more.

 

I also know a lil Polish cause of my mom's relatives. simple phrases like "give me a kiss" and some really long song.

 

and sign language cause of my sister (handicaped) and mom (teaches handicapped preschool).

 

and I started teaching myself japanese, but decided to stop until I can learn it in a classroom.

 

back in HS, I took one of those ASVAB tests and apparently I can learn languages twice as fast as the "average" person. (same for math). but I have yet to put my ability to the test.... a main reason I want to try to take classes on japanese.

 

 

what about you? do you speak any other languages?

I know some olelo makuahine (hawaiian), hindi/urdu (I can talk with friends in that), and some Arabic and Hebrew words.

Japanese is really hard and would be better in a class room area.