Sick Batteries

Trey Brown
10:45
4/03/09

Useful Inventions seem to be popping up all over the place these days and many of them aimed at making the world a more energy efficient and eco friendly place. By utilizing one of the world’s most prevalent and dangerous organisms professor Angela Belcher and her team hope to make rechargeable "virus" batteries a thing of the present and not a thing of the future. Batteries are composed of a cathode, anode, electrolyte fluid and a separator between the cathode and anode. Professor Belcher's virus batteries will have their anodes made by a Bacteriophage (only attacks bacteria) virus that's harmless to humans. These have the potential to power things as large as electric plug-in vehicles as well as tiny devices. The process Professor Belcher and her team use with the Bacteriophage virus in order to make the batteries also doesn't involve any toxic or environmentally harmful chemicals or materials. Professor Blecher says that the genetic engineering aspect allows for continued growth and evolution for the technology and that the only limit is scale which is a problem easily solved with a battery that is able to take any size or shape.

Having efficient, renewable, and powerful energy sources is becoming a growing concern and the more technology like this the better. The lack of attention and interest these types of technology have been getting has to have had many people in the science fields worried but it seems with a little encouragement they can come up with things like this virus battery that will allow for cheap multiuse batteries that can be used for any devices imaginable that might need electricity. The flexibility of these batteries would make them a god send for the world at large when good quality batteries are needed during emergencies or use in medical and even military equipment. The batteries ability to be used in any size or shape device also means much more diversity in the electronic products that can be made since a reliable power source is going to be readily available.

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