Technology is growing faster than human perception, often pushing the boundaries of all thought. Our nervous system operates using electrical signals and body maintains its own temperature, improvising on this natural phenomenon, German scientists have designed a circuitry to transform human body heat into electricity.
This designed circuitry will harness the heat generated by the body to produce electricity. Brainchild of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute, the generated electricity could perhaps be the next useful mechanism to power those gadgets and machines, in our daily living, hospitals and elsewhere.
If the discovery gains positive results, it would result into a revelation around the globe - just imagine your mobile phones running without the batteries, using nothing but the warmth of your hands. Numerous machines are used in the ICU’s of the hospitals to keep track of different organs and intricacies of the body of the patient, powered by electricity, the machines are attached with wires that form a very muddled surrounding. However, with the circuitry the machines will work without power sockets, instead will draw all the power they need from the warmth of the human body, while the respective data will be sent directly by a radio signal to the central monitoring centre.
The technology is just amazing, it works on the principle of thermoelectricity generators (TEG) made out of semiconductor elements, that extract energy from the change in temperature, i.e - extracting electricity from variations in hot and cold environment. The difference between the human body temperature and the surroundings, is only of few degrees, therefore only about 200 millivolts of power can be produced - that’s just not enough to power electric devices, which require about 1-2 volts.
The scientists were concerned with the predicament, and have probably found solution to it. They are combining components in a entirely new way to create circuits that operate on 200 millivolts, which has enabled them to build an electronic system that functions without internal batteries, drawing their energy from body heat alone.
The main feature of the technology is that it can generate electricity form any place where a temperature difference occurs, which could be on the body, on radiators or in air conditioners because the scientists believe in the near future temperature differences of only 0.5 degrees will be sufficient to generate electricity.
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[Source: Technologynewsdaily]
