Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Human Blood For Electrical Power

Posted by Zonk on from the blaah-blaah! dept.

burner writes "A Japanese research team has developed a fuel cell that runs on blood without using toxic substances, opening the way for use in artificial hearts and other organs. The biological fuel cell uses glucose with a non-toxic substance used to draw electrons from glucose. So where should I have my laptop power port installed?"

4 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. 0.2 mW by Seigen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its interesting, but unless you can use multiple cells or something there is not enough power to run any kind of pump. Afaik one of the major issues with any kind of artificial heart is it kills some of the cells as it pumps. Still this kind of technology is definitely interesting, and who knows what might be possible in the long term.

  2. Dupe? by Escherial · · Score: 5, Informative

    Didn't slashdot report on this last year? Japanese researchers, check; using blood for energy, check...seems like a dupe, yeah.

    In any case, 0.2 milliwatts isn't exactly that much power: the AbiCor artificial heart documentation mentions that it consumes several watts from its external battery pack, a far cry from what this provides.

    Though, I can imagine a beowulf cluster of these. ;)

  3. Re:That's funny... by William+Robinson · · Score: 5, Informative
    In a way, you are right!! Read this from TFA

    Since the electron mediator is based on Vitamin K3, which exists in human bodies, it excels in safety and could in the future generate power from blood as an implant-type fuel cell)

    Though a bit distant, it might become possible to *fabricate* parts of bodies(not alone heart), that can be *powered* when implanted.

    --
    hilarious
  4. Re:So that's how they did it. by masklinn · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually, humans wouldn't have to sleep for the machines to use them for processing - large parts of neural systems were unused.
    No they aren't, that whole "humans only use 80% of their capacities" urban legend is bullshit, neural system structures are quite heavily specialized and although all of them aren't used 100% of the time there is no such thing as a "waste" in the neural system, nearly everything has a role, and what doesn't used to or may have one in the future.
    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler