Vampire batteries and thanks to the Bluehost support guy

It’s been a bit tumultuous the last week or two as I’ve been trying to get this blog working again. I almost lost the whole thing yesterday so thank you Bluehost (the hosting service for my site) support guy for helping me to retrieve my posts. At this point, I have managed to make the full posting area visible (so I can see what I’m writing) but my spell check function and a few others are still not operational. I’ve decided not to bother fixing it as it is far beyond my technical skills and I’d really rather be writing.

This is for you, support guy (not a business article but it is a medical application that might be of interest to you). Vampire fuel cells, i.e. these fuel cells are ‘blood-powered’, may help fuel batteries for implanted medical devices. It’s a very cool idea (if it works) since it means a pacemaker or a deep brain stimulator used for people with Parkinson’s Disease or other similar devices could be fueled by the natural sugars found in blood. Researchers (Mu Chiao and Chin-Pang-Billy Siu) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have developed a prototype which has been tested iwth human blood plasma proving it’s feasible but there haven’t been any animal or human trials yet. There’s a more technical explanation* at the New Scientist website and a more general one here* at the Vancouver Sun newspaper website. (Note: The Vancouver Sun articles are usually placed behind a paywall after a day or so.)

*Sept. 8, 2017: Those links don’t appear to be functioning but I did find this ‘backgrounder‘, where the preferred term is “yeast-powered fuel cell” on the UBC Applied Science website.

2 thoughts on “Vampire batteries and thanks to the Bluehost support guy

  1. Pingback: Harvesting biomechanical energy « FrogHeart

  2. Pingback: Vampire batteries in Germany too? « FrogHeart

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