The battery technology could serve as the next generation of green power sources, researchers reported in a study published Jan. 21 in the journal Nature Communications. Most gadgets today run on lithium-ion batteries, which are costly. Lithium is a limited resource with the majority of the world's supply found in Bolivia, China, Chile, Argentina, and Australia. Sugars, on the other hand, are abundant in supply and safe to use.

In the study, researchers found that the best fuel was a sugar solution made of 15% malodextrin, which is a product of corn starch. In a fuel cell, the malodextrin mixture was combined with air to generate electricity with water as the main by-product.

In animals, proteins called enzymes inside cells are used to "burn" sugars, converting them into carbon dioxide, water, and stored energy. The reactions are carried out in a sequence known as a biological pathway, where a substrate (sugar in this case) is converted into a product by the first enzyme. The product of the first reaction is then handed off to another enzyme as the starting compound for the next reaction - and so on until the final products are created.

Here, researchers created a completely new enzyme pathway that is not found in nature. "We put a lot of enzymes from different sources into one pot," Y.H. Percival Zhang, the lead author of the paper and a professor at Virginia Tech told Business Insider via email.