Potato-Powered Batteries Debut

MojoKid writes "Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has just introduced what it's calling 'solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes.' In short, it's a potato-powered battery, and it's as real as you're hoping it is. The simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. Researchers at the Hebrew University discovered that the enhanced salt bridge capability of treated potato tubers can generate electricity through means readily available in developing nations."

Comments

food

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could just eat them...

Re:food

[Nursie]

NEWSFLASH - not everyone in developing nation is starving and short of food. For some, an alternative power source such as this is appropriate.

Re:food

[bennomatic]

THANK YOU. That sort of mentality disgusts me. I stayed at a place in Belize near the Guatemalan border once, and that place is third world by anyone's definition. And walking down the streets you had to dodge the chickens and keep an eye out for falling mangoes. I'm sure that if they had a way to power their cell phone towers with mangoes and chickens (and other plentiful items, they'd be thrilled to do so.

Re:food

[billcopc]

Hell, many of them probably eat better than we do... less reliance on hyper-processed junk.

Re:food

[hairyfeet]

But in that case wouldn't wind, solar, hell even a hand crank, be a better solution? I just don't see getting enough power from spuds to make this a very viable long term solution to anything. Maybe if they had figured out how to get power from rotting or otherwise useless food waste, that I could see, but this strikes me more like the stupid corn ethanol "green power" which is basically a back handed subsidy for corn growers.

As the populations of the world increase probably the LAST thing we will want to use for power is edible food, especially when there are non edible sources such as wind and solar that really isn't hard to harvest.

Re:food

[kheldan]

Precisely. Isn't the #1 problem in "developing 3rd world countries" there being enough food to go around, not electricity? I know the human machine isn't very efficient, but I'd think that the value of the caloric energy derived from eating the potato would be more valuable to them than any electricity you could get from it.

Re:Puff piece

[shabtai87]

I'm sure there's a significant way this differs from 50% of 4th grade science projects...

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

They did, and right now the oil is killing all of our food :{

Re:Puff piece

[Zouden]

Indeed. This article is painfully embarrassing.

This cheap, easy to use green power source could substantially improve the quality of life of 1.6 billion people

Yep... 1.6 billion people are going to boil potatoes and place them between sheets of copper and zinc in order to light an LED. Who writes this stuff?

The scientists discovered that the simple action of boiling the potato prior to use in electrolysis, increases electric power up to 10 fold over the untreated potato and enables the battery to work for days and even weeks.

Boiled potatoes sitting around for weeks. It's a revolution!

Re:Great

[belmolis]

What you say would be true only if potato production were limited to current levels and if there were no surplus. In fact, potato production could be increased to accommodate use for batteries, and in any case th ere is actually a surplus. Total world food production is adequate - the reason that some people starve is poor distribution of the available food, in considerable part due to political reasons. (Starvation in North Korea, for example, is the result of the incompetence of the country's government.)

Re:Israel and batteries

[ChromeAeonium]

Possibly because solar power is pretty big in Israel, so high tech batteries are in their best interest. And, just some baseless postulating here, but when you're surrounded by neighbors who don't much care for you whose biggest asset is oil, improving those alternative energy techniques might be a good idea. If Israel perfected solar power & storage, that could conceivably go a ways towards helping the world kick it's oil habit (solar powered batteries for your house and car), which would cut into the cashflow of said neighbors. So, batteries are good for them, and there is a chance that maybe possibly we're seeing some sort of scientific-economic-political strategy at work here.

Re:Puff piece

[Sir_Lewk]

You know, I can put up with a lot of idiocy before I start to suspect malice, but this has gone too far. A potato battery article on slashdot, "news for nerds"? Kdawson is officially a troll.

FOOD SHOULD BE SOLD FOR ENERGY

[JaCKeL 1.0]

Once you start buying food to make energy for a car or a home, food price skyrocket and developing nations only get poorer.