Image: The battery is modeled on the “origami ninja star” we all likely remember from high-school, and it runs on dirty water.
Battery technology is constantly evolving, even if those evolutions don’t always hit the market. Take, for example, a new battery design by Seokheun Choi and his students at Binghamton University. The battery is modeled on the “origami ninja star” we all likely remember from high-school, and it runs on dirty water.
It’s a disposable bio-battery, about two and a half inches wide. You put a few drops of dirty water on the center, open it up into more of a ring shape, and let the bacteria in that water do the rest. It’s not super powerful, it can currently run an LED for 20 minutes, and could be used for other biosensors. It’s biodegradable and cheap, weighing in at about 70 cents each, though the team is looking for ways to make it even cheaper.
This battery in particular isn’t really intended for industrial use or anything like that. It’s primarily intended to power biosensors for use in the field, where traditional batteries are wasteful, expensive, and heavy. It would be especially useful in developing countries where doctors and researchers don’t have as ready access to labs to test patients, ground water, and so forth.
But it is a sign of the times. Biofuel and bio-batteries are being researched all over the place, with the intent of developing power systems that are renewable and have a lower impact on the natural world. Because so many of these devices are as yet pretty inefficient, they’re easy to dismiss, but that’s a bad idea. The world is certainly moving in a greener direction, and it’s only a matter of time until these kinds of devices are efficient and cheap enough to begin replacing more traditional power sources. Why not get ahead of the curve, and look into some of this research, maybe even consider investing?