Originally published August 22 2005
Urine-powered diabetes monitor batteries being developed in Singapore
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
New disposable diabetes testing kits being developed in Singapore are utilizing urine as a power source.
BOFFINS IN Singapore have come up with a wizard wheeze for those times when you need an electronic health check while you are on a pub crawl.
They have built batteries that can generate electricity from urine and although the prototypes have been designed for cheap, disposable healthcare test-kits for diseases such as diabetes, it could only be a matter of time before we could be taking sample for our PDAs and laptops.
The breakthrough was published in the Institute of Physics' Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.
The report by Dr Ki Bang Lee, a research team at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) said the paper battery uses the fluid being tested (urine) as the power source for the device doing the testing.
Currently people trying these tests at home have to use lithium batteries or external power sources.
The new battery is made from a layer of paper that is steeped in copper chloride (CuCl) and sandwiched between strips of magnesium and copper.
The boffins hope to have a sample testing credit card with a chip onboard that can provide a complete disposable testing kit.
Using 0.2 ml of urine, they generated a voltage of around 1.5 V with a corresponding maximum power of 1.5 mW, so we are a wee way off powering an IBM Stinkpad.
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