Your Body is a Giant Fuel Cell!

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Carcano, Apr 18, 2007.

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  1. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    So far most of the research on fuel cells has been on those that use hydrogen or methanol...without much success as yet. They are still far too expensive to market, and hydrogen presents far too many logistical problems to be feasible.

    On reading this article however, it occured to me that the most obvious fuel cell has been ignored...the human body! The body runs on liquid fuel - glucose, and very efficiently.

    Now researchers at Saint Louis University have developed their own version of the same process that produces electricity...several times as much as a comparable lithium ion battery.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070325111602.htm
     
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  3. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    A lot of the work I did at APL/JHU was biomedical. I was part of the team that made the implantable insulin pump, now commercially sold. It is an "open loop" system. I.e. the user must consider the sugar content of the food just eaten and by radio wave link command the appropriate release of insulin (but only about once per month get a shot to refill the reservoir of the pump.)

    Obviously, a "closed loop" system would be much better. As I have a broad range of knowledge and am quite creative, I was asked to try to make a blood sugar sensor. I found two ways to do this. One was an implanted fuel cell that ran on the sugar, but it would not function for more than a week or so as the body will coat almost anything put into it (encapsulate it) if it can not dissolve it.

    The other way probably would have worked, but was not attractive: The cerebral spinal fluid, CSF, (You continuously make 0.3cc / minute and it flows down inside the spinal cord from the brain and is dumped into the body general near your "tail" with positive pressure.) The CSF tracks the blood sugar well and is clear. If one were to fuse two or three vertebra and placed two crossed polarizes, and LED and photo detector in a bypass tube of the CSF flow, then the optical rotation is a good index of the blood sugar level but lagged about 5 minutes.

    Thus years ago I invented, (on paper only) the sugar powered full cell, but as a sensor of the blood sugar level, not for power.
     
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  5. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    I always wondered what that tiny hole in the center of each vertabre was for.

    This fuel cell runs on any kind of alcohol too, its inventor Dr. Shelley Minteer has even used it with vodka and gin. Beer has to be de-carbonated first.

    Current fuel cells use a platinum catalyst which is obviously too expensive, but certain biological enzymes work in the same way.

    As you say, they are fragile and degrade easily. Minteer came up with a way to protect them using a porous polymer coating, and shes been using the same cell for months now with no loss of efficiency.
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Not sure you are commenting on my post about CSF flow, but it is not thru "tiny holes". It is just inside the dura sheath that surrounds the brain and the spinal cord. I also was involved in trans-dura stimulation with chronically implanted electrodes for the relief of intractable pain in humans.

    In a primate lab, associated with JHU hospital, I helped drop steel marbles down thru a guide tube directly onto the dura (after a laminectimy that removed the posterior process of one vertebra, to expose the dura better). This study simulated the spinal cord injury so common in car accidents. We did nothing for half an hour to simulate the trip to the hospital and then began the various treatments under test. Typically chilled artificial CSF with various agents (like cortisone) added were perfused by the injury site using a needle inserted thru the dura between the injury and the brain with second more distant exit needle allowing it to escape. We made some significant advance in how to treat spinal cord injuries when they arrive at the hospital.
     
  8. dexter ROOT Registered Senior Member

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    Ideally, I would prefere a proton (H+) pump across an electon gradient to produce energy at almost 100% efficiency!
     
  9. leopold Valued Senior Member

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  10. dexter ROOT Registered Senior Member

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    Wern't there some races across Australia attempting to utilize that? I don't think thats ideal. I dont think that photosynthesis would work well at all, sure, it would burn CO2 if you somehow modeled it after Z-scheme krebbs cycle photosynth, but think about how slow plants grow. . . Even with all their leaves, they have only enough energy to grow a few inches a year.
     
  11. hanhao Registered Member

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    reminds me of matrix where machines harvest humans for energy
     
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