Sugar-powered batteries in your mobile phone? Sweet!

Ah, if only Tony Stark had thought of perfecting this instead of arc reactor technology.

 

A team of scientists from the United States has developed a prototype for a sugar-powered, energy-dense bio-battery. Led by Y. H. Percival Yang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering from Virginia Tech, the team wrote a paper published in the online science journal Nature Communications detailing their findings.

 

A sweet setup

 

The prototype battery runs on maltodextrin, a glucose-based food additive. The unit has an energy storage density of 596 amp hours per kilogram, and is about as small as an AA battery. Impressively, the battery can last about two times as long as typical lithium-ion batteries on a weight-for-weight basis.

 

Human beings and other biological organisms are naturally engineered to extract energy from sugar. Through glycolysis – the process of passing glucose down a system of enzymes that converts it into pyruvate – ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and NADH (reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) are produced. ATP and NADH are compounds which are vital to the body’s metabolic processes.

 

However, artificial units such as this battery prototype require a bit more creativity and ingenuity in order to achieve similar results. Thus, the team devised an artificial pathway for facilitating the extraction of energy from sugar in the battery.

 

According to the researchers, they were able to obtain “nearly 24 electrons per glucose unit” from maltodextrin through the synthetic pathway they devised, comprising “13 enzymes in an air-breathing enzymatic fuel cell.” The electrically-charged subatomic particles obtained through this process could then be harnessed to power electronic devices.

 

Through the use of two redox enzymes, the researchers were able to oxidize glucose in order to generate NADH. The compound served as a carrier for the electrons extracted from the glucose, after which the particles were transported and prepped for use in the battery’s electrode through a mediator.

 

Sugar-powered success

 

“High-energy-density, green, safe batteries are highly desirable for meeting the rapidly growing needs of portable electronics,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “Sugar-powered biobatteries could serve as next-generation green power sources, particularly for portable electronics.”

 

The sugar-powered bio-battery presents a number of unique advantages. In addition to having a high energy storage density, the battery is also fully biodegradable and easy to charge – all you’d have to do is add more sugar, literally. Furthermore, sugar is a renewable and abundant resource, and is much cheaper than the metals require for lithium-ion batteries.

 

By the researchers’ estimates, these sugar-powered batteries should be ready for mass consumption in three years' time, or at least as soon as they successfully work around the limitations of the battery’s current levels of power density and longevity.

 

Iron Man could have avoided his whole blood toxicity problem, had he thought of working with Yang and his colleagues. Then again, if he did, the Armored Avenger might have ended up worrying about diabetes instead. — TJD, GMA News