Amazing New Battery Powered by Pee

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[Eureka!]
The first urine-powered paper battery has been created by physicists in Singapore. The credit-card sized unit could be a useful power source for cheap healthcare test kits for diseases like diabetes, and could even be used in emergency situations to power a cellphone, they say.

The urine-powered battery was able to generate a voltage of about 1.5 volts – with a corresponding power of 1.5 micro-watts – using just 0.2 millilitres of urine, says Lee. And if a second droplet of urine was added 15 hours after the battery was first activated, the replenished urine could generate still more electricity.

The battery is currently suited for use with disposable devices – it is not yet ready to power laptops or iPods. "But if, for example, we place a small cellular phone or transmitter on a plastic card, the chip will work as a disposable biofluid-activated means of communication in an emergency,” Lee told New Scientist. “In this case, the size will be less than that of a credit card.”

Good-bye, oil crisis. Hello, new urgency for stopping along the way for a Big Gulp.

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