Sony’s Gadget Powering ‘Sugar Cubes’

Did you know that one bowl of rice contains the same amount
of energy as 96 AA batteries? Shocking, isn’t it? And what’s more, gadget
conglomerate Sony plans to harvest that energy to power the gizmos of the
future. The plan is to use glucose, commonly known as sugar, as the primary
source of electricity in their bio battery.

The basis for the fuel cell was prototyped back in 2007 but Sony
has been forging on since, crafting one of the most intriguing eco designs to
be made available to consumers. The technology really is bio-fuel at its best. But
harvesting glucose energy from food may seem pretty bizarre and, well, it is!
One such example has cell phone users dropping a depleted bio battery into a
bottle of pop to feast on the copious amounts of sugar therein. Could this
change the way we use gadgets? And perhaps more importantly, the street value
of pop in general?!

So what do these super-cool bio-batteries look like? Well,
besides the picture above, they measure in as individual cubes at 39x39x39cm. For
the metrically impaired, that ain’t exactly small (especially if they’re going
to be all sticky from soaking in Coke, which will in turn have to make a much
larger mouth for their bottles). Depending on the gadget you want to power the
cubes can be connected to one another (kind of like pieces of lego left in a
mad scientist’s lab). The technology is still very much in development and has
no consumer launch date in sight but the energy harvesting capabilities have
been repeatedly demoed at various eco-expos.

The focus from Sony’s on the bio-battery seems to be to
craft a portable, eco-friendly and safe product and so far the most practical
source of glucose is the aforementioned pop. But I can’t help but wonder if
there could be a household application. Here’s how it would work; steal a
handful of sugar packets from your local coffee shop, drop them into the basin of
your dehumidifier and then turn the sucker on. Water then gets pulled from the
air and then glucosified with the sugar packets. Then the energy cells do their
energy extraction, thus providing power to the dehumidifier and perhaps several
other household applications at the same time. It’s practically perpetual motion!*

The entire system was fittingly inspired by Mother Nature and
her bestowed ability upon plants and animals to extract kinetic energy from
sugar found in the food. Now, if they could only come up with a gadget that
runs on sweaty palms…

*[Please note, I am not a scientist, I have never been one
and know none personally. Please direct your laughter/witticisms below in the
comments in regards to my horrendous knowledge of basic physics]

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