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Sony Runs Walkman Off Sugar-Based Bio Battery
StonyandCher writes "Sony has created a battery that produces electricity by breaking down sugar. The bio cell, which measures 39 millimeters cubed, delivers 50mW — a world record for such a cell, according to the company. 'In the bio cell sugar-digesting enzymes at the anode extract electrons and hydrogen ions from the glucose. The hydrogen ions pass through a membrane separator to the cathode where they absorb oxygen from the air to produce water as a byproduct. The electrons flow around the circuit outside the device producing the electricity needed to power it.'"
Laptops, cars etc?
One thing that I think would be a problem with "bio"-anything is consistency. What if it gets too hot, too cold, too humid, whatever? Do the biological components start behaving differently? Will the power output stay consistent under extreme vibration, etc?
but...can they use sugartwin....
The bio cell, which measures 39 millimeters cubed, delivers 50mW -- a world record for such a cell, according to the company.
The real question is, how much force does it create when it explodes?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
No sony device will run on anything else, sure it is less efficient and probably won't work for very long, but sony brand SugarRay is now the only power you are allowed to use in your house. Old standards and new technology aren't important.
This just in HighDefinitionBatteries have been adopted by the biggest battery studios SugarRay is now dead.
First sugar powered post
OH great, now I'll have to pay higher sugar prices. Oh wait, I already am... :(
:)
Thank you Ethanol!!!!
Though this means I could concievably harvest my own sugar and store away enough to power a small generator capable of taking over the world.
I can convert glucose to energy very efficiently, just give me a crank.
\u262D = \u5350
Sweet!
After months an all-sugar diet, your Walkman becomes obese and sluggish, then you need to give it regular insulin injections, etc.
Kevin Smith on Prince
...my body's been doing that for years.
I hate be a bit of a troll on this but Economists are already warning about food-based sources for fuel. Using grains to create ethanol could have a negative impact on the food market by driving up prices - especially for poor countries. Now Sony, in their infinate capatilsitic wisdom, have created a way to power a device, using suger. Nice. So in 15 years down the road, families around the world start starving so I can power my power-hungry laptop with a few pounds of suger, and dump a tonne of ehtanol into my gas guzzling HUMMER to get 10MPG. It's nice to know that my own personal power needs can determine whether or not the worlds poor can feed themselves. It's time to move away from this as an alternative power source because it's the 'right thing to do.'
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
play BluRay discs? And does it have DRM so as to protect the consumer?
That's all we need: unkillable devices competing with humans for food. That can lull us to sleep or drive us crazy just by playing the same song over and over.
We'll go out not with a bang, or a whimper, but a "shuffle".
--
make install -not war
Someone who follows this field please reply- how are they doing with using these things to run implantable medical devices? Are they on the market, in human testing, in animal testing, in design, still just a glint in a venture capitalist's eye?
I know they're planning to have all sorts of implantable blood-powered sensors that send radio signals out to monitors. So, for one example, a diabetic can have a continuous blood glucose meter implanted in their wrist, which is powered by something like this, and sends wireless signals to a wrist-watch that gives continuous readings of blood glucose, bypassing all the finger-pricking blood tests. And the watch could then store that data and send it to the computer, where they can track it, graph it, correlate it with diet and exercise, recognize trends in the disease, etc. I'm sure there are endless cool potential medical uses. But I've been hearing about this for many years now, and while I'm sure I could Google up how it's going with a few hours of reading, would some knowledgeable Slashdot reader like to just cut to the chase and tell us where things stand?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Two friends chatting:
"I love your new iPod Nano"
"Oh, that's just the battery."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just ask Mr Fusion.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
What happened for example in Mexico with tortilla prices http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6319093.stm and the threat to tequila production as well(!!), I wonder about the wisdom of converting our food supply to slake our thirst for energy. I would far better like to see alternative energy products like hydrogen fuel cells and the like rather than turning over arable land to energy production.
These batteries may have the potential to be good, but the impact on people, especially in the third world where food prices are a large obstacle has the potential to be nasty.
So my walkman will need to tinkle?
So Sony is cool again, right?
Please put your "That's Sweet" jokes under this thread, and be sure to include your home address and the specific way you would like me to kill you.
Sony refers to the sugar powered battery as a "Teenager".
Note: Purchasing teenagers is illegal in every country except Saudia Arabia and Nigeria.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Unfortunately, the American version will run off of high-fructose corn syrup.
also, there's an Obvious Simpsons Reference here which I am too lazy to make.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
They should try to make a self powered mini bioreactors which consume sugar from blood.
I one day forsee this technology being paired with a highly efficient food processing machine, breaking down foods into their component sugars.
Turning your garbage, old moldy food, etc into your households electricity needs!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
First you get the sugar, then you get the power, THEN you get the women!
crazy dynamite monkey
I for one, welcome our C12H22O11 overlords
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If food prices are driven up, many poor countries are in fact going to benefit. With their very cheap labor, they could, at least in theory, produce cheap food and even export it. However, food subsidies in the developed world essentially kills their markets. Not only are they not able to export, they end up importing cheaper, subsidized food.
The Raven
we wouldn't want bugs and mushrooms to feel left out.
"Yeah, my notebook runs on insect exoskeletons and fungi."
Who would think those lemon batteries would B the power source of the future.
That's Sweet!
1600 Pensylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20500
ask for "W"
Folks, don't listen to the parent murder conspirist. Post all the sugar jokes you want.
I wonder if there's potential for medical uses? Like powering pacemakers or other internal electronics, or burning off excess glucose in type II diabetics, or just burning off glucose for weight control
"There are now more overweight people in the world than people who are undernourished..."m ain1962961.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/03/health/
Well I think we have found a better use for carbs: an energy source for walkmen. When I ate a lot of carbs I ended up being over 100 lbs overweight. Cut them out and the weight drops off.
I think Sony should name their humanoid robot in development "PlayMusic".
Sony have been "sugar" powered for years. How do you think all those execs get that idea that they are "top of the world" and got the "best products of all time ever" ideas? ... and all those ideas that we'll screw them customers with our proprietary products and they won't notice, they'll beg for more. MORE! **throw face in bag**
I think this reflects a trend that we're seeing more of lately: technology using materials and processes taken from biology. This shouldn't be too surprising, as biology is optimized for the particular physics and chemistry of our universe.
DNA just wants to be free...
The price of corn went up thanks to all these 'green' autos. Now the price of sugar is going to go up because of personal audio devices!
;)
They need to concentrate on getting power out of byproducts like veggie diesel. Now gimme a walkman with a small diesel engine running a small generator and then I'll be happy. Granted i'll have to stand in one place because it'll be too heavy to carry. And my hands will stink after fueling. At least grease doesn't explode to readily.
Hey, here's a question. Would a Vegan drive a volkswagon that runs off of animal fat grease? What a delimma... it's already dead, and it would be 'green.' What about a car that runs off of roadkill. Ok, this is going to be modd'd offtopic
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
This just in, "Sony and Dell in sweet new deal that promises explosive new laptop experience!"
Well, that's the end of free packets of sugar.
-Styopa
If we assume the cubes are 39 mm for all 3 dimensions, each one is 59 cm^3. Therefore, you could fit 1,000 of them in 59,000 cm^3 (2.1 ft^3, agreeing with your calculation), which would be a cube that was 39 cm (1.3 feet) for all 3 dimensions. So yes, a wee bit big.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Remember: Hydrogen fuel cells are just batteries in effect. They aren't a method for producing power. You have to have hydrogen gas to make them work and that doesn't occur in quantities such that we can just gather it. It must be separated from another compound, water for example. Ok, but that requires energy. Where does that energy come from?
Supposing that the biogenesis theory of fossil fuel production is correct (the classic theory, that says it comes from living things over long periods and as such is not renewable) we are going to run out of it at some point. Unless you think we should all go live in the wilderness without power (in which case I say you first) we need to find alternate energy sources. Biofuels may well be a good one.
Hydrogen isn't a solution by itself. We may start using it as a more efficient way to store and transport power, but to get it we need to get energy from somewhere.
Unless we are going to take the Luddite answer of saying we need to stop using technology that requires power (which will lead to millions, perhaps billions of deaths as we cannot sustain the current population on preindustrial means) then we have to look for alternate power sources. We can't stick our heads in the sand and just whine about problems. Any energy source will come with problems, that's just life. The problems have to be weighed against the benefits.
Also please remember: Biofuels are in their infancy. Maybe we should keep investing and working, see if we can't figure out ways to make it more efficient. Plants are pretty efficient little solar cells, when you get down to it, we just need to work on getting ones that we can then efficiently turn in to other forms of energy.
I think we have just found our ultracheap solar panels, Sugar Cane!
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
How does it not react when youre not using it? This seems like something that would keep reacting all the time until it ran out.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Ok, but CAN you bring the sugar bags onto the flight? It can be used as a rocket fuel and here; and as an explosive Sugar has a LOT of energy!
I'm single, and food in the US is only sold in "family size" portions. That means 50% of the stuff I buy spoils or gets moldy before I have a chance to eat it. Today, this goes in the trash or garbage disposal. But once this sort of battery becomes common, we will just have sugar processors. Dump your moldy food in, and fuel cells come out for use in your phone, iPod, laptop, and whatever else.
It really is like the Mr. Fusion! Garbage powered devices!
And for the people saying this will lead to food shortages in poor countries: No, using food I would have otherwise thrown away is not going to affect them at all.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
So will the US version need to use high fructose corn syrup instead to avoid the crazy sugar industry restrictions?
Psh, this is supposed to be news? I made one of these with an apple, two wires, and a digital clock in kindergarden.
But what's the efficiency of sugar? I found in a diet site the following data:
So sugar is very inefficiency compared to other fuels. But at least it's a start. In any case, this reminds me of the times where we had to depend on animals to do the heavy work. How did you recharge animals? With plants, of course! Maybe that should be our goal, to have all our machines running on biofuel, hence becoming carbon neutral.
/rant ... I must be wrong.
... anyone think of THAT?
Reading all these responses makes me think that all you can do is complain about this or that. What about, this is neat, maybe battery life will be longer, maybe I don't have to cry Noooo when I'm on a plane and my battery died. Also I have noticed that just about everyone turned into some sort of activist. Discussions are mostly about *impact* on this or that, not that much on the technology. Also it seems that on every opportunity a political slant is added to every comment. I thought this was mostly a tech site
On that note, the huge impacts with food price changes and all that hinge on one HUGE assumption: mass adoption. Not to mention the time until this will actually be sold and OTHER inventions/technological advances made at the same time. Who knows, we may find a way to produce said sugars from OTHER sources
rant\
Fourty-two!
No mod points left! WHYYYYY!!!
these Sony people wanted to charge me USD 200 for a couple of noise-cancelling earbuds, in an official Sony Style store. How much will they try to charge me for these batteries ? no way!
Too bad the article fails to mention what these enzymes turn the sugar into. Ethanol?
Hey I know how to solve the battery (hic) recycling pro (hic) problem. Can I have your (hic) dead batteries?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Uh, Suhweeeet!
1060 W. Addison, Chicago, IL.
Shoulder-mounted RPG, remote-controlled bomb, flame thrower, or M-16, your choice.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Original Sony press release with video.
I'll just point out that the subsidised food actually drives the poor farmers out of business and reduces the amount of land that is then dedicated to farming within the poorest regions. The really nasty problems start when there's a subsequent drought and the remaining productive land doesn't produce enough food to feed the population. The result is famine, starvation, death and a greater need for aid.
Another problem appears when you have thousands of disaffected unemployed ex farmers just sitting around. Ideal supply of soldiers for anyone who decides they want to rebel against their desperate situation. Which obviously makes everything an order of magnitude worse. It's no coincidence that areas which receive lots of aid are areas which have problems with ongoing conflicts. It's a self reinforcing cycle.
Really, food subsidies are a form of economic warfare which attacks the poorest, most wretched, most defenceless people on the planet...
EU and US farmers are directly the cause of millions of deaths in the 3rd world.
Deleted
They create an innovative source of energy, and then demonstrate it by powering a Walkman?
When they get around to inventing Mr. Fusion, will they demonstrate how it can power a vaccuum tube radio?
That is the reason why it won't be used in car batteries. It might get used in laptops in the future however, as I can see that working. However because you can't send in an electrical charge and have the enzymes create sugar, there is no way for the system to store the energy back into the battery without physically adding more sugar. In a car battery, once the engine is started, the combustion of the fuel turns the engine, which in tern, turns the alternator which generates electricity which is then fed back into the battery as well as the cars electrical harness. The battery is used when the car's engine is not running to power the car's electrical harness and turn the electric starter on the engine. Once that engine is up and running it turns the alternator (which is essentially a small generator). Without the ability to feed the power back into the battery, a car's battery will very quickly drain of all energy. The same will go for this type of battery, and I am sure that the enzymes don't do to well in the harsh environment that is the engine compartment of a car (or even the trunk), needing to survive temperatures as high as 180F and as low as -20F just for the 48 continental USA, let alone places like Canada.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
wontworkinspace
Don't worry about them, their main concern is getting away from those angry boxers.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
because your batteries went dead but at least you can eat them till the rescue party arrives.
You cannot have an engine based on a chemical reaction in which the energy output is greater than the input. If what you described worked, you could literally run an engine indefinitely on a glass of water as it would never consume any fuel.
Sorry, but the energy for hydrogen has to come form somewhere and it is a lossy process. Any conversion of forms of energy is at best a 1:1 proposition. You can never gain any. In reality, they are essentially always lossy to some degree.
Remember:
In any process, the total energy of the universe remains constant.
The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
They aren't just good ideas, they are the law (the first and second laws of thermodynamics).
I agree that it is rather vauge, and that all of the possible curves that you describe are possible interpretations of the data. But we don't need to know what the curve looks like for the discussion at hand.
Remember OP's original contention is that using sugar like this decreases food for the poor. We're looking for total calories here, not demographics of calorie-consumers. The article referenced by GP does demonstrate that there are enough calories to go around.
Didn't the Egyptians figure this out like 3000 years ago?
"The hydrogen ions pass through a membrane separator to the cathode where they absorb oxygen from the air to produce water as a byproduct."
Great, I've got to either diaper it or take it for a bathroom break every once in a while?
...until someone designs a battery that runs on grey goo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo).
The way I see it, that should really be practical in a few years.
Perfect complement to a low-carb diet. If you've been wondering what to do with all that Easter and Christmas candy you get but can't have anymore, well Sony has the solution. One Cadbury egg can play several hundred hours of music.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
As long as you suck on it, it keeps going and going...
"And I'd like to remind them, that as a trusted celebrity, I can be useful in rounding up slaves to toil in their underground sugar mines." -Kent Brockman
... has made sure of that for quite a few countries.
The Raven
Chemist Dr. Shelley Minteer from St. Louis University developed the tech to extract power from sugar using a special membrane mimicking the process of living cells.
l
So either Sony licensed this or developed it in parallel.
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/06-07/mar31.htm
they said 50mW but for how long until you have to refill it?
Kuwait has once again promised they will really, really, really, stop slavery. This time, really, for sure. And don't believe all those scarred and abused women Saddam freed when he knocked over their filthy little dictatorship (back before the USA came to the rescue).
But for the moment, you can still buy people in Oman, Kuwait, and Dubhai (aka the Bush-friendly Arabs).
yeah, it'll get modded flamebait, and people will come looking for me. But I'm using somebody else's wireless at the moment, so I will get another chance to spread truth another day! Sorry about that, clueless homeowner!
sugar burns, so this fits right into Sony's tech.
You'll get my chocolate over my dead body, Walkman!
All assaulting of diseased equines aside, wouldn't that mean that even candy bars would need to be prohibited? Surely it couldn't be too hard to extract sugar from it for use in a crude explosive if no one noticed the big container of nitric acid in your bag.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
will get its power from old people's medicine.
"So yeah, the battery is powered by sugar"
"Cool. *spills Coke all over the battery* Oops, sorry about that, but hey *chuckle* I just powered up your battery!"
"Um, no, you broke it."
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
39 mm on a side = 39^3 mm^3 or 59,319 mm^3. Google is great, but GIGO.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?