A Cellphone Powered by Urine
‘Physicists in Singapore have developed a battery that can be powered by human urine. Aimed at disposable health-care kits for use in rural areas, we naturally couldn’t pass up the opportunity to comment on such a product being used for those “emergency” phone calls when your conventional battery had died. Led by Dr Ki Bang Lee, a team at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology developed a paper battery which is designed to be cheap to produce, and use urine as its power charge source.
Using 0.2 ml of urine, the team were able to generate a voltage of around 1.5 Volts with a corresponding maximum power of 1.5 mW. Battery performance can also be adjusted by using different construction materials.’
July 9th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Rising demand for power in developing countries combined with concerns about carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants in developed countries have created a bonanza for carbon-light technologies including nuclear, renewables and natural gas plants. This, in turn, has put upward pressure on price of natural gas in key markets while resulting in shortages in critical components for building renewables and nuclear reactors.