Researchers make promising development in electricity generation while experimenting with human sweat

Researchers have found hundreds of ways to generate electricity without using polluting fuel sources, and here is another one: human sweat.

According to Earth.com, Japanese engineers are using a water-based enzyme ink to create biofuel cells that are powered by sweat. A recent breakthrough allows them to be screen-printed in a single manufacturing step, simplifying what used to be a delicate, multistep process.

Because this manufacturing process is so convenient, it could be used to create health patches that operate without a traditional battery.

The fuel cells use a thin paper substrate as their base. Pairs of electrodes are printed onto this material using enzyme ink. 

Associate professor Isao Shitanda at Tokyo University of Science is responsible for demonstrating that both electrodes could be printed from the same ink, research that was published in ACS Applied Engineering Materials.

"We need to bring an enzyme ink to the market that can be printed uniformly and is suitable for mass production," said Dr. Shitanda, per Earth.com.

Not only does this one-step process make it simpler to manufacture fuel cells, but it also helps standardize those cells and reduces the risk of variations between them.

This breakthrough could be revolutionary for health patches, which are bulky and difficult to dispose of in an eco-friendly way. The current models contain coin-cell batteries, which are harmful to the environment when mixed with regular trash.

The new enzymatic fuel cells react to sweat, and as the amount of sweat rises and falls, so does the power they generate. Higher activity levels produce more sweat and affect the amount of power being produced.

These health patches can measure lactate in sweat, which fluctuates with the level of effort during exercise. This gives athletes and coaches a way to access information about lactate levels without blood testing.

These patches can also be used in nursing and elder care to detect a wide range of problems, from dehydration to infections.

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