Body Powered Batteries -- Thermoelectrics

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this story on Yahoo, the folks at Applied Digital Solutions have "developed a miniaturized thermoelectric generator -- a half-inch diameter ceramic-based `battery' that converts low gradient body heat flow into electrical power." Right now they can power watches or small medical devices. How long before these things can power my handheld?"

Better question.

[jiheison]

How soon before this technology is co-opted and run into the ground by manufacturers of existing energy technology?

The big question...

[n8willis]

...is storage.

What happens when you take your wristwatch off for 8 to 10 hours? Sure, generating electricity from body heat is fine when its a pacemaker... take that off and you're likely going to miss it before the eight hour mark.

Nate

Not much info

[Shotgun]

How expensive is the material to create these small batteries? It's a ceramic, so would it be feasible to create bricks which could be used to line or even build smokestacks? Could this be a replacement for solar cells (the article indicates a temperature gradient as a power source, and those are everywhere). Obviously, these don't produce much energy, but ceramics are notoriously easy to mass produce and fashion into all sorts of artsy shapes.

Yer sig

[Anonymous Coward]

You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Save a life instead--it might be yours! Do the Math!

Ummmm, I don't kill one person every eight miles. You cut travel time by 10 mnutes every hour by going 75. Worth it to me.

Re:Not much info

[NCamero]

According to Thermodynamics, the maximum amount of energy that could be obtained by such a device is related to a few things:
1. The temperature difference between skin contact area and the air.
2. The surface area of the device.
3. The ability of the skin to supply power by reheating the chilled area in contact with the device.
.etc...

The efficiency of thermoelectric devices was pretty low in my engineering school days. I would assume they have increased like that of solar cells has.

And such devices could be used in general for smokestacks and other (waste) heat sources. The problem is that the property of insulation is really desirable for such things. And thermoelectric devices like to conduct heat so that more energy can be extracted.

Re:Matrix

[UnhandledException]

Yeah, the body efficiantly converts energy, but it converts it to stuff like, kinetic energy (motion) of blood, and firing nerve impules a few billion times a minute to complete a thought. Not exactly harvestable. If you crunch the numbers, it's much easier to take all the food you would've fed the guy, and burn it in a controlled furnace.

Re:Matrix

[dragons_flight]

Of course the Matrix doesn't work exactly right. Any decent scientist could come up with dozens of things that can't quite work in the real world, but that's not the point.

IT'S A MOVIE.

As far as I'm concerned all the details of the world outside the matrix are just fantastical psuedo-science to justify the story they want to tell about and inside the matrix. It's a story about preceptions of reality and the nature of intelligence. The details of the technology aren't important to the points they are really trying to make. Get over it.

Clothes and solar panels.

[rzbx]

We could have clothes that generated power integrating these things into them. Then we could plug in various devices into a plug in our clothes, like handhelds, watches, cellphones.
But wait, is the price that these things will be selling at be feasable? Why not make panels out of these things, put them across a black panel surface and use them as solar panels that take in the heat from the sun and produce energy, but will it produce more than solar panels? will it be cheaper?

ideas = thoughts = mind = thinking = knowledge, control of one = control of the others