You’re sitting on the train, your mobile phone rings and the battery dies. So what do you do? Well, you could crack open a can of cola to get chatting.
The bizarre idea could soon become reality after a designer produced a concept mobile phone that is powered by sugary soft drink.
Daizi Zheng came up with the phone as part of her graduation project at Central St Martines college in London. Her cylindrical design has a screw top at one end where you pour in the fizzy drink. The bio battery, in theory, generates energy as glucose molecules in the cola drink are digested by enzymes, releasing hydrogen molecules. Power, as in other fuel cells, is produced through a flow of electrons between a cathode and anode.
By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out. Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries.
But before you stock up on fizzy drinks, it is worth noting the device has not been tested as a working model. A bio battery developed by Sony in 2007 produced a maximum of 50mW. If this phone were to produce the same output, a Metro calculation shows it would struggle to generate enough power to make a call. However, bio battery technology was improving all the time and a mobile phone powered by Coke could be on the market within five years.