Researchers craft a fully edible battery (opens in new tab)

My first question was "but why?" and apparently it has more applications than one would think at first, as it says in the article: edible batteries in toys for kids would eliminate toxicity risk and supporting electronics that go inside our body (they are working in edible transistors).

I also wanted to highlight this hilarious phrase in the article:

> While all of these components are nontoxic and edible, the researchers clarify that a user is not supposed to eat the battery on purpose, which would obviate the whole point of making it rechargeable.

"Please don't buy our batteries for eating, eat a banana or something"

Very quick math says this is much weaker than a potato battery, which is a fun comparison. [1] puts the capacity of a potato around 0.1 Wh, quite impressive. Using the numbers from TFA I get a capacity of 5.2 µWh [2]. For reference an AA battery is 4.275 Wh.

A spent potato battery is apparently not edible, but 5.2 µWh does not provide much power. Also a potato battery is not rechargeable, while this one is, if you do not eat it of course.

[1] https://sciencing.com/make-potato-battery-6537882.html - 0.5V * 10mA * 20 h

[2] 0.65V * 48 µA * 1/6 h (you get a 10 min runtime at the wattage)

P.S. I know this should be calculated in joules, but battery capacity is always listed in (k)Wh or mAh, so I kept to these units

edit: correct potato capacity calculation, was off by a factor of 10

Its called a fruit?

Now we need to make marshmallow vehicles, breathable water pool, warm fire that won't burn, antigravity flooring in case children might fall down.

"Researchers find major storage capacity in metal-free aqueous batteries" https://www.inceptivemind.com/researchers-finds-major-storag... :

"The role of the electrolyte in non-conjugated radical polymers for metal-free aqueous energy storage electrodes." (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01518-z

"A sustainable battery with a biodegradable electrolyte made from crab shells" (2022) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220901135827.h... :

"A sustainable chitosan-zinc electrolyte for high-rate zinc-metal batteries" (2022) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matt.2022.07.015

Chitosan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitosan :

> Chitosan /ˈkaɪtəsæn/ is a linear polysaccharide composed of randomly distributed β-(1→4)-linked D-glucosamine (deacetylated unit) and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (acetylated unit). It is made by treating the chitin shells of shrimp and other crustaceans with an alkaline substance, such as sodium hydroxide.

Is there a sustainable way to produce Chitosan, which is an electrolyte?

https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/ Ctrl-F "anode" :

> Here's a discussion about the lower costs of hemp supercapacitors as compared with graphene super capacitors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16814022

Potato batteries are back? Quercetin would be onion/apple flavor, riboflavin will be liver/egg flavor. Activated charcoal will prevent anything from being absorbed in the gut.

Now make edible LED's and other components and we can have some pretty fancy blinking light food!

Link to PDF of the paper:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/adma.2...

Page 7 has a photo of the battery, powering an LED.

It would probably be a billion times less powerful than a silicon chip (and only last a few days), but I wonder if one could make a potato into a cpu.

Maybe useful for mouth gadgets like this thing

https://www.augmental.tech/

Now I can finally have a battery-powered horse cart

But is it delicious? Until we get dessert batteries, meh.

I’ll let y’all try it and let me know how it is!

wasn't there a drinkable (alcohol~) battery some time ago?