Bladdery Powered Devices

Visit the MSNBC article Scientists develop pee-powered battery by Bjorn Carey.

Scientists have developed a way to turn pee into electricity. And there's plenty where that came from, they point out.

Do they really need to tell us there is no shortage of pee in this world?

Cheap, disposable, and renewable, urine-powered batteries may be the perfect power source for disposable healthcare test kits called biochips, the researchers say.
"We are striving to develop cheap, disposable credit card-sized biochips for disease detection," said battery developer Ki Bang Lee. "Our battery can be easily integrated into such devices, supplying electricity upon contact with biofluids such as urine.

Please God, don't let them invent urine powered scratch tickets. The parking lot smells bad enough already. However, if they could make electricity from the biofluid that oozes from the corner of Chris Matthew's mouth, while he is having one of his moonbat seizures, I project tremendous energy potential there.

To make the battery, Lee and his team soaked a piece of paper in copper chloride and then sandwiched it between strips of magnesium and copper. Then they laminated the credit card-sized unit between transparent plastic films. When a drop of urine is added to the copper chloride paper, a chemical reaction takes place and produces electricity, which is harnessed by the battery.

Mmmm. Magnesium, copper and urine sandwich. It's the drop of urine that adds just that right touch of spice.

A few drops will generate about 1.5 volts, the same as a AA battery. The battery needs to be developed further to make it commercially viable. "Our urine-activated battery would be integrated into biochip systems for healthcare diagnostic applications," Lee said.

Wow. If they integrated an array of these things in a Bum's pants, they would have an alcohol powered battery.

Lee and his team also found that they could alter the battery's performance, voltage, power, or duration by adjusting the design or materials.

I wonder if Lee needs a special research team to help map out that optimal combination of happy hour consumables vs. Voltage and power?

Lee predicts that one day people will be able to monitor their own health at home using biochips powered by this type of battery. "These fully-integrated biochip systems have a huge market potential," Lee said.

All humor aside, this is an interesting idea. It's not really rocket science, since battery technology is one of the oldest technologies around. They will need some sort of special partitioning scheme to separate the battery contaminated urine, from the sample being tested. I would think adding copper chloride and an electrical current to the sample would make its analysis difficult.