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Pee Power to the People

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Researchers have figured out a way to make the world's first urine-powered fuel cells. Chemistry postdocs Shanwen Tao and Rong Lan at Heriot-Watt University's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences in Edinburgh are turning pee into electricity and clean water with a prototype fuel cell system.

The Carbamide Power System prototype can break urea or urine from humans or animals down into water, nitrogen, and CO2, and also produce electricity. Municipalities currently spending a ton of money and energy removing urea from wastewater, could help reduce those costs by incorporating a system like this.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100827/981/tsc-urine-powered-fuel-cells-to-offer-pe_1.html

Filed under: Electricity Energy Innovation Piss Motor Urea Urine
 

21st Century Walkman

Even the laziest of couch potatoes is a human dynamo. The act of breathing -- of moving the ribs to draw air into the lungs and expel it -- can generate about a watt of power. And if the potato actually gets up off the couch and walks briskly across the room, each heel strike can produce even more power, about 70 watts' worth. That energy could be put to work, charging a cellphone or a medical sensor inside the body. The problem is how to harvest it.

Michael C. McAlpine of Princeton University and colleagues have developed a solution for converting body movements into electricity. They have printed piezoelectric crystals onto flexible, biocompatible rubberlike material. They first made the crystals, in a series of narrow ribbons, on a rigid substrate of magnesium oxide. Then, after the substrate is etched away from the crystals, they are transfer-printed on a flexible biocompatible polymer, called PDMS.

"The development of a method for integrating highly efficient energy conversion materials onto stretchable, biocompatible rubbers could yield breakthroughs in implantable or wearable energy harvesting systems," the researchers note. A first application might be in shoes, to produce enough power to keep a music player or phone charged. The eventual goal would be to make a flexible power generator that could be implanted in the chest or elsewhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02obribbon.html

Filed under: Electricity Nanotechnology PDMS
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