New Batteries to Operate on Sugar

In the near future, longer-lasting batteries could run on virtually anything sugary, including tree sap or flat soda pop.
Scientists say these sweet new batteries could operate three to four times longer than the conventional lithium ion batteries.

"By bridging biology and chemistry, we can build a better battery that's also cleaner for the environment," researcher Shelley Minteer, an electrochemist at Saint Louis University in Missouri, said in a prepared statement.
Sugar is used as fuel by all living things.
Now Minteer and her colleagues have adapted enzymes from nature that can strip charges from sugar to generate electricity in fuel cells.

Like all fuel cells, the new device combines fuel, in this case, sugar with air to generate electricity and water as the main byproducts.
Unlike other fuel cells, all the materials used to build the sugary device are biodegradable.


SOURCE:
LiveScience.com

A very interesting and cool development.

Hopefully this will catch on, as it is both better than the current long
lasting batteries, and is environmentally friendly.


Comments, Opinions?

It is for sure interesting in the extreme, and could be very useful especially in resource poor but farmland rich areas. Overall just like everything else that is coming out of the labs it seems like one small piece of the future energy puzzle. No one solution is viable it will need to be a patchwork of technologies that generate the energy we need to live. Working with sugar and being totally biodegradeable is excellent though. Imagine the applications to your camping gear! A totally biodegradeable power pack for deep wilderness needs.
And in equatorial regions it could be a huge boon as well, however it concerns me how much of our new technology seems to require farmland. I mean we need most of the farm land we have to feed people (especially if we actually ever decide to make sure the whole human race eats every day) And cutting down more of the rain forest to make sugar to power these cells would be cutting off our nose to spite our faces. However with some of the bioreactor technologies coming out and with some manufacturing more or less creating sugar as a byproduct it could be a good niche power source.

The answer to the farmland utilization question(as well as the transportation question) is to build large hydroponic towers in the outlying regions of cities all around the world. Yes, it would utilize more energy then a farm, but the reduced transportation needs more then make up for that. It would provide Sub-Urban and Rural Areas with more jobs. A good way to start this is to retrofit 40 and 20 ft steel shipping containers. Theres tons of them just going to waste in dumpyards. They could be easily rehabilitation and converted into 7 to 8 story food/biodiesel structures.

Yes sardion you and I seem to be in agreement about alot of the solutions we need. and we both see the amazing potential of shipping containers. They are quite possibly the one good thing about having a trade imbalance

I like your idea of towers. I've always figured a large portion of the problem could be solved by moving suburbia underground. Not only would it cut climate control energy expenditures to the bone, but it would free up millions and millions of acres of land. Especially with the new fiber optic light channeling devices. Imagine the potential of having your house underground and neighborhood biodiesel etc towers. We posess all of the technology necessary to make underground living comfortable.