No, I’m not promoting drinking while driving your powered wheelchair or mobility scooter. Far from it, but you may want to hold onto a cold one just in case your wheelchair batteries need a pick me up.
Powered wheelchair users have always longed for greater battery range and a more reliable fuel system for their chairs. Traditional deep draw batteries are just not up for the demand of modern wheeling. Fuel cells are often mentioned as a down the road solution to this problem.
Why beer? Australian brewer Foster’s has teamed up with scientists to create the world’s first “beer battery”, a microbial fuel cell. The technology – using bacteria which consume sugar to generate power from brewery waste water – was unveiled at the University of Queensland.
“Brewery waste water is a particularly good source because it is very biodegradable… and is highly concentrated, which does help in improving the performance of the cell…” The university intends to install one of these beer swigging batteries at the Foster’s brewery as a trial.
Today it’s an experiment at an Australian brewery. Tomorrow it may be “a cold one for my wheelchair please”.
NICE
WCD