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Enzyme Bio-Battery Runs on Ethanol
mpthompson writes "According to this article at New Scientist.com substantial progress is being made on enzyme-catalyzed ethanol based batteries to run cell phones and laptops. Such batteries promise to be cheaper, safer and less toxic than previously demonstrated methanol based fuel cells."
A beer-powered laptop!
include $sig;
1;
Batteries run off of vodka or gin?
"A charge for you, and a blast for me."
EFGearman
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
Overheating.
;-)
We all know that the enzymes hate heat - that is, they get denatured by heat. From what I feel on my lap when a laptop was put on it, I really wonder how do something as sensitive as enzyme withstand the working temperature of a computer (I guess that'll be one of the application, from the article).
When you shrink that (from the article, they are going to.), the problem goes even more wild...
This is great news. Now I just need to buy a variety of mixers to carry in my laptop case. A splash of fruit juice, maybe some ginger ale, and I can drink my battery fuel!!!
Seriously, this has been a long time coming, and yes there have been a few other Slashdot stories about ethanol powered batteries. I would love to get a hold of a laptop that runs for hours on end on grain alcohol.
So that's why my display is so screwy - my laptop is drunk.....
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
I guess I need to stop eating them, then...
One of the major infirmities with the previously concieved designs was that I couldn't put it in my laptop and then take it on a plane - a plane being a major place where I'd like to have an unlimited (refillable) battery supply, as most planes don't offer 120v outlets for AC adapters. If this can overcome the safety risks involved with that venture, I'm sold.
:P
On another note, what else can it do?
Informatus Technologicus
It said ethanol (non-toxic, the stuff in beer wine and liquor), NOT methanol (toxic, used primarily as a fuel additive for internal combustion engines).
Now you might really get a buzz from licking a nine volt.
Won't you be my my neighbor?
This should've been from the one-for-you-one-for-me dept.
Can't you just see stressed out managers popping out the battery, tossing down a shot, and plugging it back in?
Ethanol powered phones have been arround for decades.
I have talked to God on the porcelin telephone many times.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I also run off of Ethanol(everclear). I can only imagine the fun that would come out of this.... but seriously if these batteries were meant to be rechargeable how could this been done at all with current alcohol laws?
"yes I'd like to buy some everclear for my 'er laptop" *hic
Let us grow hemp and use it to make methanol. Then methanol will be cheaper.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
"We have actually run our cells off vodka and gin."
That's kept Liza Minelli running for close to sixty years, no reason it can't run my laptop for a few hours.
-----
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
i know huge amount of amount of electricity is required to extract hydrogen. But this can be easily generated using Nuclear Power Plants - a very clean source of electricity.
use hydrogen fuel cells in the cars, and you will take care of the pollution problem.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Here I am correcting people and I didn't even take the time to properly understand why he was referring to methanol. My bad!
He was still wrong about methanol not being toxic...
Novozymes Biotech in Davis, California is selectively breeding better enzymes for converting the cellulose in corn by-products to fermentable sugars. Who knows, maybe some day Kansas will power your calls.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
I don't care if they make batteries out of peanut butter. All I want to know is when do we get a wireless phone that only needs recharging once a month or less? Thanks, I'll take the answer off-line.
.nosig
Now excuse me, my fuel cell needs a shot and then it wants to go to the bathroom.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I need to go 'Recharge' my bio-enzyme system with some ethanol too.
I hope they call the batteries Bender.
This post is free (as in cheese in a mousetrap).
Evidently they prefer it over competing fuels. This seems like a bad move on NewScientist's part.
- what is the definition of simultanagnosia?! I've been meaning to look it up!
Woo no longer do I need to say that I'm bringing booze back over the English Channel for my own personal consuption. I can just smuggle in laptops :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I really wonder how do something as sensitive as enzyme withstand the working temperature of a computer
There is a whole industry based on developing crosslinked enzyme crystals which are useful in industrial applications as catalysts. The crystals are literally poured out of plastic bottles as a powder and many can function in organic solvents (which would completely denature ordinary enzymes). The cross-linking holds together the overall tertiary structure of the enzyme, and the enzyme tends to hang onto water where it needs it to maintain secondary structure.
I don't know exactly how thermally stable they are, but I imagine they can take quite a bit. While the technology probably hasn't been applied to the enzymes in question I imgaine that if the money was there it could be done.
Ok, great, now how about Last Longer? Especially Laptop batteries, I can't seem to keep a charge on any of them. They all seem to degarde rather fast.
I wonder if people I meet in chatrooms will appear more witty and charming if my laptop is running "fully juiced up?"
Man, it would be really great if you could walk into a grocerie store and buy 'Ethanol Packets' next to the Duracells, Energizers, and Ray-o-Vacs.
No, not to drink, you lushes. It would mean that there would be a new demand for vegetable crops, Corn in particular. While the DoA is one of the most corrupt branches of our government, one can't help but think that a new demand for corn in the form of a non-perishable liquid would cut the amount of money currently being used for subsidies.
An ethanol economy is not quite as desirable as a hyrdrogen economy, but it can still be very good.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Yes, ethanol is cheap to make but expensive to buy. There'd have to some law changes to avoid having to pay the taxes associated with buying consumable alcohol. Using ethanol in the chem lab is pricy.
I've taken to locking up my batteries. The damn kids keep drinking them up. They think they're so smart topping them off from the tap, but those pesky enzymes seem much less willing to steal the hydrogen from water.
Why is hemp any better for making methanol than plain old grass? Anyway, methanol is really toxic. Ethanol is safer.
As for the hemp, let us grow hemp and use it to get stoned! At least we won't buy it from drug dealers. But that's off-topic...
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Think about the current state of technology. Nanotech is sort of biotech (think flagella motors), material science's self assembling structures are really bio-tech. Eventually all companies in the manufacturing category will be biotech companies. When your batteries are bio/nano tech based, your screen is organic, and your RAM is nano/chemo-electric.
Don't forget we can also use it to make paper, cloth, and the only natural sails & ropes that withstand salt water. If it wasn't for the hemp plant the New World would never have been found by Europeans! Sorry for threadjacking. To be on topic I'll wonder what if we (The US) didn't give our farmers so many subsidies, and instead worked on putting that surplus of food to good use? Imagine if a corn farmer would know each season he could sell all of his corn, because there was a demand for methanol!
Who is going to take away the energizer bunny's keys? That fucker has some teeth. Last guy that tried to stop him from driving home lost 3 fingers.
And don't remind me about that last call incident. Do you know what that pink fucker did when he didn't get that last boilermaker? Sure it's in nice little balls, but it's still shit nonetheless.
Hemp produces more usable biomass per acre than anything else out there.
And nobody is asking you to drink the stuff. Besides, ethanol is toxic too... close to 50,000 people die from its ingestion every year.
How many people die from methanol ingestion?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
So instead of putting sugar in my fuel tank to kill the engine, you would put gasoline?
This may be dangerous. Russians won't be able to call for a ride (after a good drunk) because they drank their phone battery.
The bottle of vodka is only for charging my laptop!
So here is the next question: a denaturing agent destroys the fuel cell. The (US) tax on non-denatured methanol is so excessive that it prohibits the use of these fuel cells in laptops, not to mention much better uses of the fuel cells, like clean running cars (where even with a road tax the tax would be much lower). So the question is, do we change the law to support this new clean technology, or do we keep an aribratary tax that is both about raising excessive revenue as well as about telling people how to live their lives? And if we get rid of a tax on alcohol to permit these fuel cells, what other rediculous law can replace it to show people that big brother can run their lives better than they can? And can I get laptop methanol without paying a road tax on it? And do methanol and programming really mix?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You know, if this keeps up, the logical conclusion is a hamster and a wheel, Flintstones style.
Yabba Dabba Doo.
My
Limekiller
We'll do what biology does: install sweat glands into the laptop!
Following that, we'll see various laptop deodorants come to market...
Bender the robot uses Ethanol for power. A couple bottles of 'Old Fortran' kept him going for hours.
Now if I could only run my cell phone off of cigarettes, we could re-purpose the entire vice industry. We all know how useful hemp is too...
Let us instead look for a better cleaner form of power, like harnessing the energy contained in the sound of ripping velcro.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Where can I buy Duff batteries? D'oh!
I can see this being a problem.
This is going to shorten my laptop's battery life.
-alcoholic
At the convenience store: "I'm sorry sir, I need some proof you're 21 to sell you this battery."
I suppose they will have to chemically treat this stuff the same way they do with Isopropyl rubbing alcohol to prevent people from trying to get drunk off of it.
I had a sucky sig.
Soylent Battery is made from people! It's PEOPLE!!! /PhilHartman
simply fry with bacon and eggs in the morning, leave for the rest of the day to dry out and top up again in the evening. As the cell gets older it will only be able to perform its function twice - maybe three times a week. Constant soaking, however ensures permanent power.
Well, .... a quick google search turns up tha------------ NO CARRIER
Because im sick of seeing it in such high levels in Australian petrol!
Gnome wasnt built in a day.
All non-regulated (as in BATF) ethanol is required by law to be denatured. There are two types of denaturing: complete and specical. Complete adds 5% methanol, rendering the mixture toxic for human consumption. Special denaturing adds a non-toxic additive to render the alcohol undrinkable. This is often done by adding phenopthalein, which (aside from being a pH indicator) is a powerful laxative. Drinking it will cause "severe gastrointestinal distress". Most consumer applications (like rubbing alcohol) use special denaturing (so they don't kill stupid alcoholics).
Just FYI for anyone thinking about using your laptop as a wetbar.
Imagine under 21's at local liqor store saying...
I want this for my laptop... why do I need an ID ?
But then the major problem is that the enzymes are replacable in the industrial container, but as I would believe, the battery would probably be disposible (i.e. you can't possibly add enzyme into it)
;-)
Moreover, the cross-linked enzyme crystals are able to withstand organic solvents but they are not that heat-stable - and if they are overheated, we can just hope that they don't go denatured, but their specificity to temperature will not change, i.e. Power goes down when temperature goes up or down, ooops....
There are other enzymes that tolerate boiling, and other extreme conditions. They are inactive in the severe condition, but have such a stable tertiary structure that they snap right back when put into the proper environment again. Mammalian RNAses are notorious for this.
From the article, however, the restriction of the enzymes to these pockets may help. For those that don't know, enzymes have a structure like a ribbon (or several ribbons) that fold back on themselevs in a particular way. By thermodynamics, as you add heat, you add entropy and the ribbon moves around too much to stay in its functional orientation.
Keeping the enzyme in a small, restrictive pocket may restrict its random motion enough to help keep the ribbon from unfolding, allowing the enzyme to function at a higher temperature than it normally would.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
and now you can drink the contents of your battery...
Not the power charge, but the enzymes? So here we have reached the point of being concerned over not just the charge, but the rapid breakdown of the fuel cell itself. And that's actually a good thing, so long as they keep it cheap and don't sell the darned thing in a non-recyclable plastic package. I've seen it happen a lot where products which could be really envronmentally friendly came packaged in something utterly inappropriate.
I agree that the other issue is- how expensive are these going to be able to run here in the US, wehre it's probably going to have to be made AND sold as a non-drinkable alcohol class- which isn't necessarily convenient OR cheap. Are they going to try to create a market for the fuels first by promoting the cell? It seems like they'd HAVE to make it run on things like gin first, since that's a tough push to get the fuel out there without anything to put it in... entertaining little cycle. I'd like one that can recharge from household compost- anyone remember Back to the Future movie series, with Mr. Fission?
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Stick one of these in a robot and voila: Bender!
In fact, the article from the New Scientist needs to be completed by reading this press release from the American Chemical Society. You also can read this article from Boston.com to get more information.
Yes, as I'm also involved in biochemistry/mol. genetics, there are Heat-stable enzymes, but remember, field-conditions are not like lab conditions, where we can add as much and replace as much enzyme as we want, and it's not that the enzyme is stop then it's stopped.
;-)
When it comes to laptop, we need a stable power supply.. who wants a supply that only work in 20oC < x < 40oC (the actual margin may well be stricter)...
but a Li-Ion backup will fix this...wait.. isn't that a big weight added on it.. oh...
Moreover, the cross-linked enzyme crystals are able to withstand organic solvents but they are not that heat-stable - and if they are overheated, we can just hope that they don't go denatured, but their specificity to temperature will not change, i.e. Power goes down when temperature goes up or down, ooops.... ;-)
I recall that there has been quite a bit of work being done to industralize the enzymes from the bacteria that grow in sulphur mudpots in places like Yosemite, and to understand what makes them tick so it could be applied to other enzymes. Those function nicely up to the temperature of boiling mud.
While I don't know that these are what the enzyme fuel-cells are based on, if they ARE one might expect them to work BETTER as they heat up - just what you want. (And cross-linking for stability at high temperatures sounds just like the sort of thing that would be discovered by analyzing such enzymes.)
(Then there's the bacteria, tube worms, and shrimp from the subocean vents, which are running nicely WAY above sea-level boiling point. But you probably wouldn't want your laptop battery getting TOO far above boiling point - especially if it's full of ethanol.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Redundant 3 minutes after a "first post"? Is there any mercy here?
Besides,it was a correct "Soviet Russia" jock with sufject reversal.
Both methanol and ethanol are toxic, just in different degrees and ways. Methanol is very bad because its breakdown products include nasty things like formaldihyde, but alchohol poisoning from ethanol ingestion is almost as deadly. The big difference is that your liver is fairly well designed to handle removing ethanol and safely break it down whereas it is not for methanol.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Wouldn't a ceramic shell casing pretty much solve that problem?
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
Here in Finland it is very common to have "drinking competitions". I gues there are vey few of us who could beat pdp-1 in this competition! :)
AOL could solve world hunger.
How about bringing such fuelcells in some islam countries, where you cant even import one drop of alcohol ?!?
(people get punished if they bring cherry bonbons to their relatives)
(In fact, they seem to insist on getting a fairly costly form of it to agree to marry.
While the DoA is one of the most corrupt branches of our government [...]
Department of Agriculture? That's nothing.
Do you REALLY want your laptop regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF)? (Maybe with a little assistance from the FBI and the National Guard?)
I can see it now: Some kids are holding a LAN party. A sniper takes out the dogs in the yard. Then cattle cars full of ninja-suited jackbooted thugs pull up, blocking the view of the front door from the tipped-off press held at bay a mile away. They knock on the door. The homeowner answers, and is shot first in the arm and then the chest. The house is stormed, the cats stomped to death. Helicopters appear and fire into the upper floors, while a group brakes into the second-floor window and the last one throws a grenade in after them. The people not shot are herded into the upper floors or the underground basement sideroom by teargas. Then tanks crush the passages to the sideroom, take out the stairs to the second floor, smash much of the building to tinder, and open ventilation holes to the wind. Once the solvent has evaporated from the injected teargas (so the remaining dust is thoroughly flammible) a few pyrotechnic-based teargas grenades light it off. The teargas dust lights off the tinder, setting the building on fire, while producing Hydrogen Cyanide gas. And anyone not already dead is poisoned the first time they take a breath of smoke while trying to make it out (or just sitting trapped in the basement room).
And at the press conference they tell us that they really HAD to go after these low lifes, because, even though they had a license to make high-capacity laptop batteries they were suspected of not paying a $200 tax on one of 'em. And they were teaching their kids to download MP3s.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This research was performed at St. Louis University.
Now consider Anheuser-Busch's main source of revenue...
*****
There are many people in this country who, through no fault of their own, are sane.
Would it power one of these?
Besides. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of barmonkeys.
Methanol is simply not that toxic. If you drink large quanities (ie, ounces), it causes a condition called acidosis, which leads to blindness and death (among other things). Trace amounts are easily eliminated from the body. If you don't drink it or bathe in it, you will be fine.
love is just extroverted narcissism
More info here:
http://www.wileyeurope.com/cda/cover/0,,0471499
</karmawhore>
My journal has hot
Why would you need to? Enzymes by definition don't get consumed in chemical reactions.
The cross-linking holds together the overall tertiary structure of the enzyme, and the enzyme tends to hang onto water where it needs it to maintain secondary structure.
For those of you that don't know anything about proteins, tertiary structure refers to the way a protein folds. Since for proteins, shape is critical to function, if the bonds holding the tertiary structure are broken, the protein won't function properly.
Just for thoroughness, primary structure is the sequence of amino acids, secondary is a shape adopted before folding, and quaternary is the way multiple polypeptide chains join together.
try the MSDS's ...
From the looks of it, the development team at Microsoft has been sauced on this technology for years now!
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Indeed, here in the UK we pay farmers not to grow crops. Surely it would be better to pay them to grow fuel? oh but then the government wouldn't get extortionate tax revenue from all the North Sea oil we produce.
I remember reading a letter to a Victorian science journal complaining about the problem of horse waste in London's streets. The writer declared it an aesthetic and health menace. Fact is, the removal of horse poop was a HUGE problem in pre-automotive urban societies. So they polluted too, just in a relatively non-toxic way (in the sense that horse poop is biodegradable and doesn't give you cancer). I have no data on hand but I assume they solved the problem by having people who cleaned it up and sold it as fertilizer.
And if you think that car pollution "blows away in the wind", you've obviously never been to a REALLY big city with poor emission laws, like Mexico City...
Freedom: "I won't!"
I would have thought that the major problem next year is that Russia would be a bigger energy supplier than Saudi Arabia...
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Who knows, maybe some day Kansas will power your calls. ...we can all say, "Carry on, my wayward Sun!"
It's sad how even though I know you're exagerating, I can name the incidents that were the sources for 90% of violent acts you listed. The BATF is just plain psychotic at times.
What about the "other stuff" in {vodka | whiskey | gin | etc}? Do the extraneous bits collect over time to gunk up the works? Do these things need cleaning from time to time?
Well, assuming perfect catalysis, no denaturation/degradation, this is true, but those aren't necessarily good assumptions. (Textbook simplified definition vs. real life behavior). In living things, proteins get made and destroyed all the time. I don't really know much about the system they're using here, but even though it should be a lot less complex than the cellular environment, things are still going to degrade over time. Diamonds aren't forever either.
Your mind is squeezed by a blast of pain!
is there anything ETOH can not do?!
Well, so the solution to our laptop power problems is easy: get a hamster, a wheel, and a little generator. That biological generator runs on lettuce, food pellets, or, in a pinch, airline food (not recommended for long term power generation because it may damage the generator), and it produces mostly carbon dioxide and some (hopefully) solid waste.
I went to read the article, but it was down. No surprise there. /.)
... and needs occasional replentishment - but - question here :
I am guessing the ethanol is 'consumed' by the fuel cell and the energy that is released by the process is available to power your laptop (et.al)
Does replentishing the ethanol provide the fuel cell with a full charge, or does the fuel cell still need to be recharged by the proper application of electricity?
If adding ethanol removes the need to plug it in (ever) to recharge the battery (at the expense of alcohol, of course) I think I am going to really, really like fuel cell based toys (laptop/cell phone/etc...)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Worry about real threats, not super-terrorists hiding under the mattress.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
http://www.slu.edu/readstory/newslink/2474
Sorry, just too unfocused to post properly. The above mentioned link is the press releas from St. Louis University, where Dr. Minteer and her colleagues have done some of the work. That sure teaches our alcohol taskforce! "But ociffer, I was just charging my cell phone!" Cheerio!
Arabs are above their own laws and mandates. They believe that if you drive to small islands on the weekends that Allah will not see you with the whores, drugs, alcohol and porn. Then they can come back to their areas and take turns oppressing certain groups (i.e. anyone not Muslim and not of their tribe). What an enlightened group they are. Perhaps they will dutifully bring up the crusades to both cover up their own CURRENT stupidity as well as ignore that the crusades were just as much their evil and murderous campaign than of the westerners. Who cares about historical facts when you can have mindless zealotry! Yay extremists!
Make your own! They've been doing it in the south and apalachia for years. (And it's actually legal in New Zealand )
Steal this sig.
it makes sense that this was developed at SLU....all we did was drink.
You would actually be topping up the fuel not the enzymes. Enzymes do not actually "burn up", although they are occasionally denatured.
Think of an enzyme as a protein based catalyst - it speeds up or engineers a reaction - although it manipulates the other chemicals, the enzyme comes out of the reaction chemically the same as it went in.
Topping up methanol does not seem that far fetched. I like the sound of this technology- but i can see it being replaced by H2 fuel cells. although maybe enzymes could be used to convert readily available fuel into hydrogen for use in the fuel cell..
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol