[Akram Abbas]

Scientist Gerald Watt, great grand nephew of James Watt (inventor of the steam engine) creates a fuel cell out of sugar and common weed killer that might someday power our gadgets, cars or even homes

The human body’s preferred energy source could someday power our gadgets, cars or homes.Researchers at the US-based Brigham Young University have developed the prototype for a cheap fuel cell that that runs on glucose and other carbohydrates sources, and uses a commonly available herbicide as a catalyst.

“Carbohydrates are very energy rich,” said BYU chemistry professor Gerald Watt. “What we needed was a catalyst that would extract the electrons from glucose and transfer them to an electrode.”

The surprising solution turned out to be a common weed killer known as Viologen, as reported by Watt and his colleagues in the October issue of the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. Watt shares his rather appropriate last name with his great-great-uncle James Watt, inventor of the steam engine.

The effectiveness of this cheap and abundant herbicide is a boon to carbohydrate-based fuel cells. While there are many different combinations that can be used to make a fuel cell, hydrogen fuel cells are considered superior and ‘green’ as their only emission is water vapour. However, hydrogen-based fuel cells, such as those developed by General Motors require platinum as a catalyst, which is prohibitively expensive.

The next step for the BYU team is to ramp up the power through design improvements.

The study reported experiments that yielded a 29 per cent conversion rate, or the transfer of 7 of the 24 available electrons per glucose molecule.

“We showed you can get a lot more out of glucose than other people have done before,” said Dean Wheeler, lead author of the paper. “Now we’re trying to get the power density higher so the technology will be more commercially attractive.”

Since they wrote the paper, the researchers claim to have achieved a doubling of performance. And they’re pursuing an even stronger sugar high.