"Life-saving medical implants like pacemakers and defibrillators face a big drawback: their batteries eventually run out. So every few years, patients need surgery to have the batteries replaced.
Now a company in New York state is planning to tackle the problem by providing patients with an implantable power source that recharges their implant's batteries using electricity generated by the patient's own body heat." (For the full article go to NewScientist.com .)
At first, this might sound like good news. But if you think it over, you'll realise what's happening. It all started with those watches which run on body heat (are they sill in the market?). If such devices used up our body heat, wouldn't we be left feeling extremely cold? Those life-saving implants could well be the end of our lives. Of course, if they'll probably be low powered, and since our body generates a lot of BTUs of body heat, I don't think that will matter anyway.
But still, imagine a person has every known injury, and requires several medical implants. If that person is treated with implants which make use of "biothermal batteries", he would lose a considerable amount of body heat.
This is terrible I tell you! Things are happening almost exactly as they did in "The Matrix", the only difference being that instead of machines turning us into sources of energy, we ourselves are doing so. The entire human race could become batteries!!!
I found your blog from the "next blog" button.
ReplyDeleteBody heat is a big deal for me. I'm frequently anemic. So, how am I supposed to heat myself and charge batteries, too?
I'm convinced we'll all be robots soon. Hmph. :)
Ah, I'm no expert on batteries and biomedical technology, but I doubt the battery will use up that much heat, especially when compared to the amount we lose off our bodies constantly.
ReplyDeleteLooking at how the battery works (sitting in the temperature difference, and letting heat do some thermocoupling) it seems to me like it'll have an insulating effect, rather than a cooling effect. So really it would have the opposite effect.
Mr/Ms Anonymous from Wellington, New Zealand, whose ISP is Paradise Net,
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ from your opinion that it would have the opposite effect. The biothermal battery requires heat to work, so it removes heat from our body, thereby making it cold. Secondly, thermocouple don't insulate(I learnt about thermocouples in my 12th grade). A thermocouple generally consists of two different pieces of metal, like Cu & Fe, joined together at two junctions(A couple of metals). When there is a temperature difference between the two junctions, the equlibrium is lost, and so elctrons flow from one metal to another, generating a current. To get this temperature difference, the biothermal battery makes use of body heat, leaving us a bit (a very little bit) cooler. Of course, you may argue that the current flow gives out heat, but that heat is quite negligible in comparison with the heat required to generate the current.