New Battery Technology Draws Energy Directly From The Human Body (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer: A team of eleven scientists from UCLA and the University of Connecticut has created a new energy-storing device that can draw electrical power from the human body. What researchers created is a biological supercapacitor, a protein-based battery-like device that extracts energy from the human body and then releases it inside an electrical circuit â" the implantable medical device. According to a research paper published earlier this month, the supercapacitor is made up by a device called a "harvester" that operates by using the body's heat and movements to extract electrical charges from ions found in human body fluids, such as blood, serum, or urine.

As electrodes, the harvester uses a carbon nanomaterial called graphene, layered with modified human proteins. The electrodes collect energy from the human body, relay it to the harvester, which then stores it for later use. Because graphene sheets can be drawn in sheets as thin as a few atoms, this allows for the creation of utra-thin supercapacitors that could be used as alternatives to classic batteries. For example, the bio-friendly supercapacitors researchers created are thinner than a human hair, and are also flexible, moving and twisting with the human body.

Comments

More likely...

[denzacar]

It would just drain some of your fat. You know... that biological battery technology used by all animals bigger than a bacteria.
Also, besides being used to reduce fat by the slimmest of margins (Getit?!) it would probably be there to help diagnose various medical issues - perhaps even repair some of them.

Would that extend people's lives? Remains to be seen.
There's always a chance that recording oneself while licking an electric socket might become the new craze as people keep giving up smoking more and more - eliminating any life extending benefits of medical nano-machines.

What are the health effects?

[guruevi]

It seems to me that removing ions from the bloodstream will have the same effect on larger scales as drinking large amounts of water. The summary is confusing because at one part it is saying it's using body heat and on the other part it's extracting ions from the fluids.

Using a small stirling-type engine is one thing although I highly doubt you can motivate the body to generate enough heat differentials for the engine without creating a form of inflammation response. Extracting ions from the blood stream is a bit tricky unless we can target very particular ones like sodium in combination with sodium-rich diets (McDonalds every day). It's neat that they can do it, I just think that it's going to be tricky to power up your cell phone without killing yourself.