Body Powered Batteries -- Thermoelectrics

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this story on Yahoo, the folks at Applied Digital Solutions have "developed a miniaturized thermoelectric generator -- a half-inch diameter ceramic-based `battery' that converts low gradient body heat flow into electrical power." Right now they can power watches or small medical devices. How long before these things can power my handheld?"

Comments

Matrix

[Dark Paladin]

Now, isn't this how the Matrix started? All these watches and Palm Pilots trying to take over the human bodies for more warmth, covering people at night like kittens on your bed? I can see it now:

The Future:
People walk down the streets, scurrying between allyways, keeping out of the light. One man stands in the middle of the street, trying to grasp a piece of cheese left in the alley.

Before suddenly, he is swarmed by little Palm Pilots, hurtling down the street like killer bees.

Trinity: Run, Neo! Those are the ones with the ARM processors! They need even more body heat than the old Dragonball ones! And - *gasp in horror* they have wireless antennaes!

The last thing we hear is one quick "Woah", then the sounds of millions of AvantGo processes launching.

Of course, I could be wrong.

The big question...

[n8willis]

...is storage.

What happens when you take your wristwatch off for 8 to 10 hours? Sure, generating electricity from body heat is fine when its a pacemaker... take that off and you're likely going to miss it before the eight hour mark.

Nate

microns?

[egomaniac]

I assumed the release was just written by a clueless person when I saw "10 micron amps". Poor fool just meant "10 microamps".

Then later down I see a quote by the *chief scientist* saying that they plan to develop a battery "capable of generating 3 volts of electricity with 10 microns".

Maybe I'm just an idiot, but the only definition I know of "micron" is a unit of linear measure. I have no idea how this would relate to anything electrical. I'm still cautiously assuming they meant "microamps", but does anyone have any other ideas?

Self contained artificial organs, cobber!

[TaleSpinner]

How long before these things can power my
handheld?

Screw that. How long before they can power an
artificial heart!?

A completely self-contained, reliable, artifical
heart available off-the-shelf and requiring no
external battery pack or management would be a
sea change in modern medicine. Jean-Luc Picard
lives! Wonder what brand he uses?

Powering medical devices... one problem

[hillct]

And you thought falling into a frozen lake was a health hazard before... just wait until you have an artificial heart run by your body heat.

Even after the EMTs pull you from the lake they couldn't restart your heart for at least half an hour until your body temperature increased. Bad news.

Seriously, it doesn't mention what's the minimum temperature the device requires.

--CTH

Not much info

[Shotgun]

How expensive is the material to create these small batteries? It's a ceramic, so would it be feasible to create bricks which could be used to line or even build smokestacks? Could this be a replacement for solar cells (the article indicates a temperature gradient as a power source, and those are everywhere). Obviously, these don't produce much energy, but ceramics are notoriously easy to mass produce and fashion into all sorts of artsy shapes.

Negroponte on "Powerless Computing" from Wired

[RobertFisher]

Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab has a related article online on this topic.

Bob

larger power ones - power your server!

[morcheeba]

>How long before these things can power my handheld?

Yes! They can provide 100's of watts!

These have been used for years to power deep-space satellites such as Pioneer 10 (solar power tends to not work too well when you get away from the sun). Plus, no moving parts to fail. They use radioactive decay as their heat source.

They use plutonium-238. It half-life is 87.8 years and emits primarily alpha particles, a non-penetrating type of radiation which requires little shielding.
Here's a good page from nasa and another from the doe

Power ranges from milliwatts in 1964, to "multi-hundred-watt" in 1977 (the sole power source for voyager), to 208 Watts electrical (+4500W thermal!) in 1990, to 507 Watts (electical) in 1997.

Practically, there's that whole radiation thing, plus some costs to enrich the material, and then also disappating the thermal energy released (it operates on a gradient, so you've got to have a cold end to counter the hot end)