Urine Powered Battery Developed

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Research investment into developing smaller and cheaper chips to process information in disposable health tests has been significant, but they were still reliant on an external power source. The researchers at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology think they have overcome this problem with their latest urine powered battery. From the article "The battery is composed of paper, soaked in copper chloride, sandwiched between layers of magnesium and copper. The whole thing, once laminated in plastic, is just a millimeter thick, and 6cm by 3cm in size." The breakthrough promises a cheap and disposable power source for home health tests."

Comments

Re:Is it powered by urine?

[tobirius]

The urine is only the electrolyte, the chemical reaction would be: Mg + Cu2+ --> Mg2+ + Cu The battery would also work with pure water. But the whole thing won't be a very "clean" source of energy. Copper chloride is not good for your environment.

Are they sure that it's urine powered?

[ChiralSoftware]

It sounds like it's using urine as an electrolyte. That's like a "potato battery", which again is just using the potato as an electrolyte, and is not getting any power from it.

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Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

1 battery outputs 1.5 mW / 1.5V = 1mA

theoretically you could get 1A at 1.5V by wiring them in parallel, OR 1mA at 1500V by wiring them serial, both outputting 1.5W of power.