Current Events: Eco-Friendly Battery Runs on Old Newspapers

     The article Eco-Friendly Battery Runs on Old Newspapers is about the Sony Company and how they were able to use old newspapers and cardboard to generate electricity and power a battery. This idea was inspired by a previous successful experiment in which Sony used fruit juice to power a music player. Though the article does not say when and where this happened, they do state how they managed to make the project work. Sony recycling-engineers take old paper products and mix them with water and cellulase (enzyme). The cellulase enzyme is actually found in wood-eating species such as the termite. The cellulase and water solution helps decompose the cellulose in the paper products to form the necessary glucose. The glucose is then combined with oxygen and other enzymes, creating electrons and hydrogen ions which then are used to power the battery. Although the battery isn't powerful enough to power anything except a music player, only water and gluconolactone (a neutral product) are the left behind.

      I believe that this idea and project is very clever and effective because now we can begin to create energy using recycled materials. Newspapers and cardboard has already been used so using them again would just be helpful instead of wasting new materials. In addition, no harm to the environment was done when they used the newspapers to power the battery. While other products may cause waste and harm the earth, this way does not. This eco-friendly and creative experiment could lead to other ideas and projects that help save the environment while still giving us the same results that using regular materials (that could potentially harm the earth) would. I predict that in the future, we'll be able to develop even more advanced and efficient ways to generate energy and electricity just like using the old paper products did. Overall, I think this is a great idea and hope in the future we are able to develop more environment friendly ways to create energy and electricity.

Article and picture from:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-12/eco-friendly-battery-runs-old-newspapers