Researchers in Alberta have discovered a new way to produce electricity. They believe the finding may eventually lead to a new kind of battery for small appliances such as cell phones.

The technology involves no chemical reactions, relying instead on pumping water through tiny holes.

Scientists have long known when water touches glass or ceramic it creates a negative charge on the solid, which attracts positively charged ions from the water.

If you push water through channels about one-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, it becomes positively charged at one end and negatively charged at the other.

To mechanical engineering Prof. Larry Kostiuk of the University of Alberta, the arrangement looked like a battery.

The idea came about when Kostiuk had just met fellow engineering Prof. Daniel Kwok. The pair were talking science, getting to know each other's discipline, when the light bulb literally began to flicker.

Prof. Larry Kostiuk

Kostiuk, Kwok and two graduate students investigated.

"We place electrodes, like metal screens, in the fluid, and connect them up with an electric wire," said Kostiuk. "Current flows between the two and essentially is electricity."

The system produces a small wattage, enough to operate microelectronics such as calculators and cell phones.

The next step is to turn the filters into commercially available batteries, but that is a long way off, he said. The team is in the early stages of understanding how the system works and determining its potential.

The study appears in Monday's issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.