Electricity from the Nose: Engineers Make Power from Human Respiration
October 8th, 2011
Engineering Professor Xudong Wang, Postdoctoral Researcher Chengliang Sun and graduate student Jian Shi created a plastic micro belt that vibrates when a small wind blows by, such as respiration. When you blow air through this machine, I causes a small electric charge due to the mechanical stress. This process is called the piezoelectric effect. These researcher applied that energy into a small electrical devise. “Basically, we are harvesting mechanical energy from biological systems. The airflow of normal human respiration is typically below about two meters per second,” says Wang. “We calculated that if we could make this material thin enough, small vibrations could produce a micro watt of electrical energy that could be useful for sensors or other devices implanted in the face.” He believes this can go even farther so that it can read blood glucose for diabetic patients or have this energy control the battery of a pacemaker. This sort of micro technology can be used to make energy from blood flow, motion, heat, or in this case respiration. This could provide a constant amount of energy to be used for countless amount of different things.
I enjoyed this article because it showed not only the technology, but the future plans of these engineers. I liked the idea of using the energy from respiration to power a pacemaker. This article was well written and provided a lot of information on the subject.