Researchers Develop Sugar-Based Battery

VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY, VA, USA. We always knew that sugar gave us the extra energy to keep going than usual. And just like that, a team of researchers recently developed a new kind of battery that runs on sugar with even more energy density than the typical batteries that we are used to. This development could mean that we will soon have biodegradable, refillable and cheaper batteries as compared to the conventional ones.

Sugar batteries are not that new anymore. However, this new sugar battery that has just been developed has a higher energy density as compared to the ones that were developed earlier. That means this new sugar battery will be able to run longer before it needs to be refuelled.

The study is being led by Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. He is working with his team in his laboratory facilitated by the university.

He stated that sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature so it’s only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery. With his new sugar battery, hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic batteries will be kept from ending up in landfills.

In the next few years, we can expect to see cell phones, tablets and other electronic devices running on professor Zhang’s sugar battery. After all, these all require more power in our energy-hungry world.