

Human Blood For Electrical Power 369
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?"
Location of power transfer zone (Score:3, Interesting)
-Lasse
Re:So that's how they did it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, though, I think it would have been cooler if the machines were using us as inexpensive processing units. What if, in the real world, you didn't actually have to sleep, and that 'sleep' is the machines using you to think? o.o
Weight Loss? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why go to the gym to work out and burn calories from when you can plug a small cord into your mid section that would enable the device to draw energy directly from your system... and when your blood was running low... fat stores would naturally be tapped.
Result? Losing weight while reading
Nothing Better (Score:2, Interesting)
Extra power for my laptop, AND a way to burn of those pesky extra calories from those twinkies !!
Re:Some kind of limit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Diabetics applaud. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now you can eat your cake and ice cream and this little gizmo will take that extra glucose in the blood stream and make power (albeit small amounts) for you.
The major benefit of this would be to reduce the blood glucose levels without taking medication, the power generation would just be a cherry on top.
Re:Glucose Levels? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:So that's how they did it. (Score:2, Interesting)
He was making a joke. Go read the post again.
There is also a human intelligence use... (Score:2, Interesting)
I know this is scary, but how long until this is our "National ID Card."
Re:Some kind of limit? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they did, the energy released would probably turn us into miniature suns the moment we turned one of these on.
It's more likely that the now unstable glucose molecules will break down into carbon dioxide and urea, consuming some oxygen in the process, much like it does when consumed by a normal cell. One presumes the spent potential from the electrons will result in the electrons returning to the blood stream.
And yeah, pushing this too hard would probably fairly easily kill the user, (read, a laptop at 60-100Watts? i doubt it. maybe a trickle charger for the battery
A well controlled system could easily result in an acceptable increase in energy consumption, which would result in weight loss, without actually exercising (also, not a good thing, since the muscles aren't going to develop, but the fat will be consumed, leaving the user with no way to keep warm). One presumes that anyone using a device like this would be on a strict high-glucose intake diet.
of course, this is conjecture, i've only done basic biology and chemistry
Andrew
Re:the question is (Score:3, Interesting)
estimate (Score:2, Interesting)
- 5liter of blood
- to pump, say 40mm Hg=500mm H2o of overpressure is needed(diff between upper and lower pressure). I recall numbers like 120 over 80 when they measure your blood pressure.
- 50 beats per minute. if the heart is a big fist, say it pumps like 100ml per beat.
so 5liter per minute.
So say the heart pumps 5l blood per minute 50 cm higher up.
0.5m*5kg*(10m/s2)/(50 seconds)=0.5W
Now, when doing a big effort, i think beat volume can double(from memory), and speed can go *3(180), that'sa factor of 6. Blood pressure goes up a lot too, to 160Hg, but i don't know the difference between upper and lower pressure. Make that a factor 10 in all between hard work and rest.
So the heart produces 0.5 to 5 W. About.
Conclusion: at the moment, the idea of powering artificial hearts is just the
It be possible one day, I suppose.
Well now I really wonder if that wild estimate was any good, or did it just hit a good number because the mistakes cancelled out... Anyone?
glucose monitor (Score:5, Interesting)
Note: I'm not saying that the device would lower glucose levels by consuming glucose, but since it is powered by sugar, the current should be proportional to the amount of sugar. If blood sugar is high, the implant's signal is high, and the pump delivers more insulin. No real logic required. That's why it's such a good fit. And they say so in the article:
Re:glucose monitor (Score:5, Interesting)
My first thought was shame hypoglycemics won't be able to use it, but then if it is only generating 0.2mw its hard to say just how much glucose it will use. Probably not much.
Weight loss? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if this power supply was connected to nothing but a resistor on a heat sink? Could this artificially raise my metabolic rate? Could simply removing glucose from the blood stream lead to weight loss?
Re:glucose monitor (Score:2, Interesting)