Mobile telephones, iPods and laptops could soon be powered by pouring fruit juice into them after the development of a battery that runs on sugar.

Researchers who invented the sugar battery, which is made from biodegradable materials, said it had the potential to be refuelled from whatever sweet liquids were available.

Substances tried with success so far include sugared water, still soft drinks, glucose, sweetened drink mixes and tree saps. The battery’s inventors believe that it could provide power for more than three times as long as existing devices on a single charge, andsay that commercial sugar batteries will be in the shops within five years.

Ideally, they said, users would be able to buy prefilled cartridges but it would be possible to use whatever sugary liquid was to hand.

The Pentagon, which funded the research at Saint Louis University, Missouri, is interested in using the batteries in portable electronic equipment carried by its troops.

Dr Shelley Minteer told an American Chemical Society conference in Chicago yesterday that while sugar batteries have been developed before in laboratories, this one was the most powerful yet devised.

“This study shows that renewable fuels can be directly employed in batteries at room temperature to lead to more energy-efficient battery technology than metal-based approaches,” she said before the conference. “It demonstrates that by bridging biology and chemistry, we can build a better battery that’s cleaner for the environment.”

The prototype battery was constructed out of biopolymers from crustaceans and algae. Enzymes called dehydrogenases oxidise the sugar into electrons and protons.

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