They attribute their success to two things. First, they chose ethanol instead of methanol for their fuel. “A big advantage is that ethanol is not toxic like methanol, so it is easier to deal with,” said team leader and assistant professor of chemistry Shelley Minteer. “You can use any alcohol. You will be able to pour it straight out of the bottle and into your battery,” said team member Nick Akers, a graduate student. “We have run it on various types. It didn’t like carbonated beer and doesn’t seem fond of wine, but any other works fine.” Eventually, they hope that one to three drops of alcohol could power a cell phone for a month.
The other key to their success is the extremely stable environment they have created for their enzymes. They coated the biofuel cell’s electrodes with a polymer that contains tailored micelles, or pores, which provide an ideal microenvironment for the enzymes to thrive. Their biofuel cell has been producing a constant current for over two months now. “There’s no evidence that it is going to stop tomorrow. We don’t know yet how long it’s going to last. Could be six months,” Akers said.
The Saint Louis team is striving to increase their biofuel cell’s power density. Currently, their battery produces 2 milliwatts of power per effective square centimeter, whereas the average cell phone requires 500 milliwatts. They are also trying to design a battery that can fit today’s portables while producing the necessary power output. “It’s like a radiator in car,” Akers said. “It’s folded, and all those ridges and folds give it a high surface area so the effective surface area becomes tremendously huge. You can do this on a micro scale so that the effective surface area of the electrodes is enormous. This is what we are doing in the designing process.” Akers believes their team will have a working prototype in a year, and that the finished product will hit store shelves a year later.
Is anyone else reminded of The Simpsons episode in which after Homer views the science fair exhibit about ethanol powered automobiles he dreams of a gas station where he can pump a dollar of “gas” into the car and then a dollar into him?
yeah I thought I was the only one.
Alternative fuel is a fascinating concept to be sure but until we can implement it at the same cost or cheaper than current combustible technology, it’s not going to come off the shelf. The sad truth is that money makes the world go ’round even. However, if the federal government is willing to subsidize, in a small way, the purchase of these vehicles once/if they hit the market (like the current hybrids out there), then I suspect they’ll develop at least a cult following.
That’s funny. I must have missed that episode. Ethanol blended gasoline is already offered at many service stations. So long as your car is fine with it, we really should all be using it. Most of us don’t, I think, because we’re afraid it will hurt our car. Perhaps we need to create awareness programs to promote ethanol’s use. Governments could also legislate car manufacturers to make sure their cars run smoothly on the stuff.
I’m still waiting for the day when we all have a “Mr. Fusion” in our cars, like in “Back to the Future”, so that we can run our cars on garbage.
While the ‘Mr Fusion’ device may be a long way off there is a form of transport which uses grasses for fuel, and the by-product can be recycled to provide nutrients to grow new grasses, or used as a source of fuel for other devices. More seriously though, biofuel development is a good step towards taking some of the pressure off fossil fuels and nuclear power plants. Just imagine how much power is used to charge mobile phones worldwide, as well as running all the other gadgets that we love so much. I’m not suggesting that there will ever be alcohol-fuelled power plants plugged in to the national grid (although wouldn’t that be a good place to work?), but if you replace rechargeable batteries with biofuel cells, surely that would save some energy somewhere along the line. It may even be that there are less chemical by-products from bio fuel technology than from the batteries we all use everyday, which would be an advantage. It should be remembered though that, while alternative energy sources must be found and used if we are to have a planet left worth saving, a great many people’s livelihoods depend on the existing fuel industries and we will need to make the shift to eco-friendly power sources a gradual one.