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Body Heat Energy Generation
BuzzSkyline writes "Researchers in Belgium have developed devices to harvest the waste heat our bodies throw off in order to convert it to electricity to run devices such as a wristband blood oxygen sensor and an electrocardiogram shirt. As a side benefit, the power sources help cool you down and keep you looking cool, all while running sundry micropower devices. In fact, the researchers mention that the energy harvesting head band works so well that it can get uncomfortably cold. In that case, they say, 'This problem is solved in exactly the same way as someone solves it on the body level in cold weather: a headgear should be worn on top of the system to limit the heat flow and make it comfortable.' But it would be such a shame to cover up the golden heat-harvesting headband with a hat."
The matrix is coming......
news at 11
What's next? A body-movement powered (or better, heat & movement hybrid power), fully functional stillsuit?
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Great, now in the future when robots and machines rule the earth, they can use this to harvest energy from all of us, just like the Matrix.
You're wasting the real potential of this thing. I live in an area that gets hot as hell in the summer. If it really does get "uncomfortably cold," I'd pay good money for a whole suit made of the stuff.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I don't understand how it can get cold. You can harvest energy from a temperature gradient, but once the headband is at ambient temperature, there's no more gradient. How does it get cold?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I suppose now we'll all wear parkas and cram energy bars during our kernel compiles?
Anyone know the cost per KWH of corn syrup?
If this is true:
Wouldn't it be extremely marketable? Especially for the military with troops in hot places and with bulky body armor and probably all types of personal electronic equipment to keep charged?
As a side benefit, the power sources help cool you down
Typically if you take something that's trying to dump waste heat, and install something that recovers power from that heat, it creates an insulating effect, reducing the cooling the object was receiving. Heat can't be turned directly into energy, only difference in heat. Adding a heat reclamation system doesn't help cool something down because the power it's getting is from the temperature difference, not the heat itself. Instead it takes power from the temperature gradient, and as such reduces the temperature gradient, thus reducing cooling efficiency.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
A fellow such as yourself should be able to find them at any supermarket in a box labelled "Cheerios".
Welcome to the desert of the real...
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
FTFA:
"Imagine portable electronics that run on a free, reliable energy source."
Um, I'm already practically there. I can get a KWh out of the wall for 5p (10c), charge up an iPhone from dead to full for a quarter (5KWh battery capacity there) and can get as many cheap chargers as I like. On my list of concerns right now, body-heat chargers are pretty far down.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I have always wanted air conditioned underpants. My dream just might come true!
If your head gets too hot with the hat on, simply put another heat absorber around your hat. If your head gets too cold again, put on another hat.
I was going to just mod you down, but the summary at least never said anything about lowering any part of the device below ambient. It said that the headband will "feel cold". Touch a piece of wood at room temperature. It will sometimes "feel" warm. Do the same thing with a piece of steel. It will "feel" cold. This is true even if both are at the exact same temperature. Heat conduction
The kids section of my local science museum even has hand-shaped pieces of different materials to demonstrate the effect.
I live in Canada... I need all of my body heat as it is.
AccountKiller
Thank you, jdunn. I wanted to make a reply just like this.
I was a student at this university, some 5 years ago all students who visited IMEC had to do an experiment for them, namely wear a watch with this technology and then it'd generate a few microwatts out of the difference between the outside and body temperature. They even gave a funny speech related to The Matrix before the experiment. It seems they've improved a lot in the meantime, though it's a shame the article doesn't mention how much power it currently generates.
Hamsters are overrated.
While that's pretty interesting, I'd like to see a non-invasive wristband blood glucose sensor. Now that would be something.
Proverbs 21:19
copper top
Someone like him will probably have to slice one into two or three rings anyway, due to the comparative length of a Cheerio.
Any heat harvesting system relies on a temperature differential - in this case, the temperature difference between your body and the air. If the device were a perfect conductor of heat, a) it would generate no power at all (because there is no temperature differential) and b) this would be pretty much identical to not wearing the device at all.
In reality, all such devices must be imperfect heat conductors (i.e. they insulate heat), and as such your skin temperature will always be higher than it would be if you were not wearing one of these. (obviously this ignores the comparison between how efficiently your skin dissipates heat, vs how quickly the 'cold' end of the thermopile does.)
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
THEY'RE COMING!!!!
Yes, I had that issue with the article^Wsummary as well, also, aren't those things fashionable as hell? Must just be the 'cool' of the fashion helping to keep the body heat down.
Morpheus: What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. [holds up a Duracell battery]
But in all seriousness. There were previous articles about physical implants into the body that run on body heat. The idea isn't so new, this is just less invasive.
Though perhaps they won't need massive amounts of force to subdue humanity; from what I've seen, most people would choose the blue pill.
I've long believed that the physical reality we live in, being entirely a product of energy and thus little more than an illusion, the idea of matter and as such is inherently linked to consciousness. . , that all things in our reality can be observed as and understood to be metaphors for systems and conflicts we are experiencing in our conscious awareness.
-You have to plug humans into the Matrix at the start of their lives when kids are most inquisitive. Red Smarties are the most popular color, and the battle over Blue Smarties rages on. . !
Humans naturally try to reject the Matrix. "Entire crops were lost."
Neat, huh?
-FL
I'd really be interested in seeing if this could safely be used inside the body somehow. You could use it to power pacemakers. More relevant to my own interests, it could possibly power an internal assembly for a cochlear implant processor. It would be nice to get rid of all of the external bits so I could run, jump, swim, and wear hats normally.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Once the headband is heated up, the energy flow is constant and considering that the area of the emitting side of the heatband is probably not bigger than of the absorbing side and there is probably no extra airflow by some fan, I wonder, how it can have a cooling effect. ...
If anything, 1 square inch skin exposed to air should lead to better cooling than 1 square inch skin covered with metal, since the sweat of the skin vaporizes and absorbs energy and cools the skin down. If you cover your body in tin foil, I'm quite sure it will feel warmer than standing around naked. So dunno
Merry Christmas, Adolf!
How many watts would this kind of thing provide? Would it be enough to power a basic computer? I suppose it depends a lot on ambient temperature, wind speed (which constantly renews the temperature differential) and body heat (higher when you're physically active).
God bless you, Adolf. I needed that this morning :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
If this think sucks up heat, why can't it recharge it's battery when you do the laundry? Plenty of heat applied to your clothes, probably enough to last till the next wash-up.
Headbands? Wristbands? Welcome to the 80s...that's gonna look so cool
Hmm call me a perv but judging from an activity when people get quite hot and sweaty and release body heat...
Power the Future. From your Bedroom.
Or:
The Future Generation is in Your Hands.
- double pun whammy.
yes yes I know, but...hehe.
Oh my! Such profanity!
I'll tell you how to get one. Dress scantily. Go to a street corner, and wait for some stud to offer you two dollars for a blow job. When he drops his drawers, you can see if his ring is to your liking. While performing fellatio, use your tongue to unclasp his ring, and swallow. Capture your shiny new cockring from one of your next two or three bowel movements. You can probably sell your story to one of those stupid gay magazines - win/win/win for you, huh?
If they can make an appliance that gets electricity from body heat and can be "uncomfortably cold", could they turn it into an air-conditioning device that run on its own, or even generate electricity while cooling? _That_ would be an invention.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Turn on your TV during the "infomercials".
Half of those are for some kind of device or chemical that will let you burn "all that fat" in days with minimal effort.
These devices siphon the energy from your body in order to work.
And you get that energy from food.
See where I'm going with this?
How many heat-harvesting headband do you need to burn out a single twinkie?
Who cares! I've seen them sell patches made out of "green tea extract" that should "burn calories" when you wear them.
10 to 1 that you get to burn more calories from a simple cup of green tea.
And that is just the things that actually have a measurable effect.
Golden heat-harvesting headbands that burn fat? Those things would sell like hotcakes.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Oh no, its matrix!
I still don't buy it. You touch that metal and it feels 'cool' until it heats up. (Ever sit on a metal chair after someone's just stood up from it?) As for the headband, I can see it feeling cool when you first put it on, but after the temperatures stabilize, it will no longer be cool.
If this worked as described, imagine this: Replace the A/C unit with this device. It will cool the inside of the house AND produce electricity at the same time. Sweet! But it won't work.
As was stated before, energy is derived from the thermal gradient. If the device conducts heat and dissipates it, no gradient.
So: It'll feel cool when you first put it on, but until one side gets heated above ambient, there will be no energy produced. Once one side (the side against your skin) heats, it will no longer feel cool.
How well does it work when the ambient temperature is above 98.6 F? I think the answer you're looking for is "not at all!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I certainly do. My brain normally runs hot, and when I have a problem to solve the limiting factor for my intelligence is how to dump the waste heat.
When I'm doing CFD flow equations in my head, or struggling with a particularly tricky philosophy problem in ancient Sumarian, I find that sitting with my head in a cold sink gets the answer a lot quicker. The problem with liquid nitrogen is that it burns the skin, but I have a hat with a peltier lining for thinking on the move....
Is it powerful enough to charge an ipod? I'll wear the cold hat for an hour to get my phone another hour of life - but any more than that and you're pushing it...
This doesn't make any sense. For a Carnot cycle heat engine or a thermopile to work, you have to have a temperature difference between the source and the sink. Assume that the radiating or convecting sink that this device uses is no more or less efficient than that of your clothing or forehead: The resulting delta T that does the useful work would mean that the source (i.e. your skin) must be hotter than the sink. Or hotter than it would have been had you not strapped this gadget on.
This would be great for use in cold climates. In fact, if the system could be throttled and that in turn changes the heat flow through the device, you could 'climate control' yourself in much the same way as adding or removing layers of clothing. But in hot climates, the 'source' (you) would have to be hotter than it would otherwise. Not good. And for ambient temperatures above around 80F, the principle method of heat elimination is perspiration and evaporation. I don't see how this system could help keep you cool, let alone work at all, in these temperatures.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hate it when i come up with an idea a long time ago and discard it as impossible then like 3 or 4 years later people are yappin about it.
Wrong.
Read the summary:
"In fact, the researchers mention that the energy harvesting head band works so well that it can get uncomfortably cold."
It "gets" cold; it doesn't just start that way. If it's cold to start with, your body will warm it very quickly, even with a good heatsink. Then it's no longer cold. Just like the science-museum materials you mention.
They clearly imply that they're effectively drawing heat away, which is just wrong.
Then they go on to suggest a hat/insulation to reduce the effect? Well, that brings the whole apparatus higher in temperature, reducing the differential, and reducing the effect.
This thing is worthless.
Those pesky laws of Thermodynamics are always getting in way of our fun.
In this case, the laws say you can't end up any cooler than the other side of the device. In fact you'll be hotter than without the device on you.
Remember the song, "I fought the Law, and the Law won?
Isn't this a bit like creating a device that captures the 'waste cold' of a refrigerator?
Don't power plants dump excess heated water back into rivers? Could this be used to capture some of this large scale energy waste as well?
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Cool and discreet
- Alfred Bester
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Caution, Avast! detects this link as a trojan.
Not unless you consider the GNAA Last Measure a trojan :-/
It's been awhile since I've been Goatse-ed, and I should've known better to check the link first. Very nice way to round out my afternoon with my cube-mates...sigh...
---
Thermodynamics Feed @ Feed Distiller
ignorance is bliss.
Mod parent +1 Informative, not +1 Funny!
Even so, the piece of steel will absorb heat from your body and a piece of wood will not. Due to the same reason - conductivity (of heat).
By the way, how about the side-effect on sweat glands? You can't cover a piece of skin without blocking sweat glands besides cutting off the air - am no dermatologist, but it seems natural that the skin will deteriorate.
Could we strap this to marine predators and route power to head-mounted photon weapon systems?
"Man that babe is hot : look how bright her iphone shines!"