1 Volt Cell from 2 Pennies and Foil

In experimenting with making my own batteries from lemon juice, I became intrigued by the design mentioned here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/The-micro-Lemon-Battery-reusable-1-hour-of-led-l/step16/Other-designs8-The-CPA-lemon-battery/

The design uses dish soap, copper foil, and aluminum foil.  I readily had these items on hand, so I created several designs to eventually settle on the one described here.

In this instructable, I use 2 pennies, a paper towel, three strips of foil, and duct tape to create a relatively clean package.

I am trying various joule thief designs with this battery, but don't think it can source enough current for the inductor to generate the 3 volts required for LEDs.

Step 1 Gather Ingredients

To build a 1V cell from pennies and foil, you will need:

Duct tape
3 Strips of Aluminum Foil (Fold it over 2 or 3 times to make sturdy strips the width of a penny)
2 Pennies from 1981 or before (these 95% copper, vs a thin coating)
1 Paper Towel
Dish Soap
Scissors

More about copper content of pennies:
http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/f/copper_to_zinc.htm

Comments

[robot1398]

how much time will it last for

[rabb72994]

This worked really well w/ bleach instead of dish soap. I got 1.5 volts

[dreamexplorer]

I've realized that sealing the first layer with duct tape may not be required as I revisit some of the other designs. I will try without sealing to see if I can still reliably generate one volt with 2 pennies and post the results here.