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Bacteria Powered Batteries

Posted by Hemos on from the it's-elementary-chemistry-my-dear-watson dept.

Agent Provocateur writes "SpaceDaily reports on a battery that is powered by chemical reactions caused by bacteria. A Pentagon-backed project, University of Massachusetts researchers Swades Chaudhuri, an Indian, and Derek Lovley, an American, say the battery's source is an underground bacterium that gobbles up sugar and converts its energy into electricity. Their prototype device ran flawlessly without refuelling for up to 25 days and is cheap and stable." The chemistry behind this thing isn't really that complex - keeping the bacteria alive and kicking during that time is prolly the tougher part - you can read more on Al Jazeera, and USA Today. Now, what about replacing this battery?

7 of 337 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Flux Capacitor by erpbridge · · Score: 5, Informative

    Right movie, wrong reference. You're thinking of "Mr Fusion", the thing Doc threw trash (banana peels, beer, and the can itself) into to power the Delorean.

    Flux Capacitor was inside the car, in the back seat area, and was shown as a Y shape.

  2. Similar by elykyllek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Similar to this Vehicle?

  3. Carnivorous Robot by qurob · · Score: 5, Informative


    http://www.howstuffworks.com/news-item107.htm

  4. Web page of the team leader: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/goto.html?c-melhui

  5. picky by stud9920 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mr Fusion doesn't feed the DeLorean, it powers the Flux Capacitor, as the whole plot of episode 1 revolved around the lack of plutonium. The DeLorean itself is powered by gas (which again is the whole plot in episode 3)

  6. Osmolarity by bluveinr · · Score: 5, Informative

    The reason raw sugar won't work, is because it will kill the ecoli. The water content in the bug is much higher than that in the surrounding media(pure sugar in this case). The water will will move towards the region of the high sugar content (following the gradient of high water concentration to low). This will dessicate the ecoli and kill them.

  7. Deja Fuel? by greenhide · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was an article on this nearly a year ago. As soon as I saw this, I assumed I was looking at a dupe. However, the earlier battery was developed in England, and part of the goal was to eventually have the battery run not off of pure sugar, but rather garbage. As you can imagine, witty comments about Mr. Fusion and the general cleaniness level of geeks ensued.

    --
    Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.