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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 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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
The turbines draw power? You probably mean produce power. There's quite a difference between the two... *sigh*
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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
See the comment above about the pig's ass.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
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?
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.
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