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The Challenges of Tapping Blood Flow For Power
joshuarrrr writes "Researchers in Switzerland have tested small turbines designed to fit inside a human artery, like an implantable hydroelectric generator. The turbines can draw about a milliwatt of power, which would be enough to run a pacemaker. The problem is that the turbines tended to create turbulence, which can cause blood to coagulate into clots. Competing systems avoid the turbulence but have trouble generating enough power."
As long as we're turning humans into batteries, we need to start pharmaceutical research on developing blue and red pills.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I hear they use induction-chargeable pacemaker batteries these days, anyone know how good those are?
My guess is that their ultimate problem isn't the recharging, but rather having to be replaced when they finally wear out like any battery does. Is anyone here less ignorant?
I can't recall when, but I seemed to remember reading about an idea of converting glucose into electricity. Perhaps a next generation of pace makers will use that for a source of power.
Life is not for the lazy.
People with pacemakers are probably the worst people to give extra clots in their blood.
This feels awfully perpetual motion to me. Granted, I'm not a heart surgeon, nor a medical doctor of any kind... but the idea that you use blood pumped by the heart to help pump the heart seems... wrong.
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
Why reinvent the wheel. The body produces energy by metabolizing sugar. I would think that track would have more promising results than some mechanical process. Plus if done well I could maybe loose weight while using an IPad.
Instead of turbines, isn't there some funky way a non-invasive device outside the artery could make use of that fact on such a small scale?
A pacemaker powered by the blood it pumps. by golly, I think we found a perpetual motion machine!
Perhaps I'm missing something here, and I realize the article just used a pacemaker as an example, but isn't there a cart/horse chicken/egg problem with a device for regulating the heart being powered by the heart?
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Well that just sucks!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A pacemaker that never needed to have its battery replaced would be quite an accomplishment.
Having a pacemaker you don't need to include a chest zipper with would be very convenient.
less blood for more vampire shows/movies please..
what's next:
Weekend At Bernies 3: vampires revive Bernie for fun
Caddyshack 3: vampires are hunted under golf course
Ghosthunters 2: a new TV series hosted by vampires
Vampireman: vampire survives in the wilderness
The Soylent Green Hunter: vampire explores the world
In this house we obay the laws of thermal dynamics.
The energy used to power the pacemaker will either cause the heart to pump harder or reduce the flow of blod.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I would conjecture that this will be an excellent example of something that sounds great hypothetically, but cannot be made to work acceptably in practice. Far better to capture energy from the kinetics outside of the body rather than its interior. From the standpoint of FDA approval alone, external attachments will be far easier to pass than anything that has to be implanted due to the possibilities of infection, toxicity, blood clots, leaks, inconvenient maintenance, etc.
Not strictly on-topic, but as lots of people posted about the whole converting blood-borne glucose into electricity thing...
Woudn't having some device consume some of the glucose in your blood for its power then make _you_ feel rundown/lower in energy generally?
Since the heart is beating and therefore expanding and contracting, wouldn't piezoelectricity work?
Also, we could hook up the people who have nothing better to do but post racist troll comments on message boards to just such a power plant. Instant electricity, no human rights issues (after all, it's only trolls), and it'll run on cheetos.
Plus, we could hook up a pump system to your dominant hand and use the constant wanking to generate even more electricity. Perhaps some sort of rectal tube to harness the endless supply of methane that only an obese man with a junk food diet can produce.
Then, when the "battery" is used up, we can rend it down into industrial grade lard and feed it to the rest of the "batteries".
tesla turbines do not cause turbulence.
Induction has been in certain pacemakers for at least twenty years. My first job as a tech was diagnosing pacemaker electronics that failed pre-assembly testing. The induction coils were used to program the pacemaker for the patients particular condition (AFib, VFib, one chamber up to four chambers). I'm sure the battery tech has improved since then and even back then the battery would last at least 5 years so I would imagine today's models probably last at least 10 years give or take. So incremental charging during Dr. visits could probably extend that out a good 5 to 10 more years provided the battery itself continues to hold a charge.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Why not put some kind of device on the larger muscles and generate the power with mechanical motion when people walk. you would need some kind of battery to store power when they were not moving for longer periods, but i wouldn't think that would be a huge problem.
Replying to trolls isn't dumb. The troll coming back again and again for abuse and never realizing that he's a masochist? That's dumb.
The alternate earth people in Robert J Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax series used turbines like that to power implanted personal computers.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You do not understand the nature of trolls at all.
You mean like they had back in the 1970s?
No, seriously. It doesn't run full-time, but should provide plenty of power several times per day that can then be stored.
What would you say if I told you I've invented a low cost, low maintenance household device that could easily last for a decade or more?
Say hello to Frank's heart!
I've harnessed Frank's heart. I was cleaning the snakes out of the pantry yesterday when suddenly it hit me... Nothing works harder than the human heart, especially when it's clogged with cholesterol. Now, Frank's heart was a mess, and it's getting worse all the time.
The rest was easy. Frank eats, I surgically attach a generator to his heart, and voila! The Cholester-Do-All! At some point, this will kill Frank, but I think it's worth it.
(courtesy of Dr. Forrester)
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Theres a better pipe you can stick a turbine on, especially in flatulent people
The turbines draw power? You probably mean produce power. There's quite a difference between the two... *sigh*
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I would rather have something strengthen the flow of my blood. I got enough circulation problems as it is.
Also if I have a heart attack I could switch on that secondary heart.... blip!
If they are going to harvest anything for energy, why not some body heat... I can wear an extra sweater.
One internship I did developed highly efficient wireless power specifically for this purpose... 4 years ago.. not sure why this is news. Similar to SplashPad but for biomedical devices, its quite easily done. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2005/10/1401.ars
Why not try generating energy from the body heat? I'm not a medical researcher but wouldn't this be reasonable? If they can get electricity from light why can't they do the same with heat?
Can't you just use the heat of the body somehow?
Blood magic is always evil!
Balderdash!
This is fairly ridiculous, people with ventricular assist devices (blood pumps) need to take blood thinners to reduce their risk of clots. This would probably lower survival rates of pacemaker patients.
I'm a biomedical engineering student in my last year of school. This idea is a non-starter. Regardless if the turbine could be redesigned to be more efficient, even the POSSIBILITY of a clot forming and causing the patient to develop a PE means it's never going to happen.
And there are more subtle effects than mere clots that happen when you put a medical device in contact with blood. Current technology does not have any solution for these problems, and has failed to find a fully blood compatible material for 40 years.
A much easier idea would be to make pacemakers rechargeable via electromagnetic induction. I asked one of the St. Jude reps why we don't do it this way, and the reason has to do with legal reasons : the non rechargeable pacemakers are less likely to fail and kill a patient.
My impression is that the ultimate limit of the life of the pacemaker is not its battery or electronics, but its leads.
Furthermore, with pacemaker tech improving every year, do you really want to keep trusting your heart to something 15 years old?
ok, seriously, what's wrong with the idea of using motion to generate small amounts of power like they do with watches? just put that mechanism in the pacemaker and you dont have to worry about this other garbage.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Nothing could possibly go wrong with this.
isn't the net effect of adding the turbine int he major arteries going to be that you'll effectively lower your blood pressure and blood flow levels due to the resistance from the turbine resulting in the heart needing to pump a little harder to compensate and maintain 'normal pressure & flow', but overall resulting in your heart working harder without the any activity from the rest of your body so that when you do need stress your heart from heavy exercise or activity that you're more at risk of having a heart problem?
And make a distributed artificial heart? I hope I'm not the only one who thought of this...
- I've got bad karma because I won't parrot everyone else's opinion
free to the world, GPL 3; Use movement and piezoelectric, a long thin metal ribbon, somewhere in the back, the elbow, along the ankle, every move creates a charge... Your truly ourcraft.
Furthermore, with pacemaker tech improving every year, do you really want to keep trusting your heart to something 15 years old?
Obviously that kind of depends on the dependability of the tech itself. I think I would prefer to stick with an utterly reliable piece of old equipment than rather than having to open me back up every couple of years for an upgrade.
Hey, you know that dialysis devices destroy blood cells due to friction ? I guess the same will happen with these turbines, and this is even more trouble than clogging blood.
It doesn't sound like you've had much invasive surgery done. The recovery is a bitch and can be very dangerous for a healthy person. Add age and diminished health and the risks triple. If a Dr. can keep from going back in he generally will.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K