A research team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are developing 'bio-batteries' that can run on the electrolytes found in blood or sweat. The battery itself looks like a tiny piece of flexible paper, made up almost entirely of cellulose, and the negative and positive ends are inserted as carbon nano-tubes.
It might come down to something like the image below; I can't find too much information on it but it's apparently a battery that runs on orange juice that you squeeze into it via a little dropper.
Maybe something like this:
Further reading:
http://www.livescience.com/1782-paper-batteries-powered-blood.html
Interesting. I decided to see if my sweat would conduct electricity. It did!
Then I thought there has to be a better way to make this work than with an impossibly inflexible test tube. I decided I would soak my sweat onto cellulose (paper) and see if that works. Which it also did.
I tried connecting several in a row to get a higher voltage with some paper I stuck to myself when I went to the gym, but I don't think the paper was quite soaked enough (or it dried up too quickly) because the voltage didn't go through. I'm going to have to find some kind of super absorbent material that won't interfere with the conductivity but also maintain the moisture for as long as possible.
Before performing this experiment I had envisioned the battery looking something like this
but I'm going to have to revise these drawings; definitely make the functionality a little simpler and also consider how many connections I'm going to need to produce enough voltage that the battery will actually be useful.
It might come down to something like the image below; I can't find too much information on it but it's apparently a battery that runs on orange juice that you squeeze into it via a little dropper.
Maybe something like this:
Further reading:
http://www.livescience.com/1782-paper-batteries-powered-blood.html
