Recharge Your Cell Phone With A Can Of Coca-Cola! (Eventually)

Fuel cell for cell phones have been on the horizon ever since I started this site in 2000... They promise to fuel a cell phone for days with a small dose of ethanol. But it's still lamentably "vaporware": You can't buy it anywhere.

But that doesn't discourage researchers, like those crazy alchemists at Saint Louis University in Missouri who developped a fuel cell that could recharge cell phones on virtually any source of sugar: Soda cans, tree tap, or perhaps some Gatorade for those sportsy rugged handsets? They told Science Daily that they successfully ran their fuel cell with "glucose, flat sodas, sweetened drink mixes and tree sap, with promising results." But with carbonated beverages, "carbonation appears to weaken the fuel cell". They did not provide details but I suspect the battery burps too much...

Promising, yet we are far from the day where a low-battery case will be solved by inserting a dollar in a vending machine: the researchers think their fuel cell could be commercially available in 3 to 5 years, if all goes well.