Thermoelectric Generators Make Human Energy Harvesting a Reality
An experimentator has used waste heat of his body to turn humans into batteries. Nick Zetta, who runs Basically Homeless YouTube channel, turned himself into a battery using thermoelectric generators.
Zetta followed a simple approach that aimed at capturing the waste heat from the human body and turning that into electricity.
Thermoelectric generator, which uses temperature differential to force electron flow, played a major role in this experiment. The device generates electricity when one side is hotter than the other side.
Temperature differential between overheated body and cold air
Zetta’s idea was to cover a bodysuit in thermoelectric generators and work up a good sweat while standing outside in the cold. The temperature differential between his overheated body and the cold air would, ideally, be enough to generate power sufficient to charge a smartphone, reported Hackster.
He covered a bodysuit in thermoelectric generators and started doing a tough workout in the cold to get temperature differences for electricity generation. It was noticed that initially, generators produced decent power, but later, the output used to drop.
It used to take place as the temperature difference was being minimized by time, and later, it used to equalize, which resulted in poor output.
Relatively high-level output
So, Zetta came up with a plan to prevent that from happening. By only applying his body heat to the thermoelectric generators in short “pulses,” he could keep the output at either a relatively high level or nothing. That proved to be enough to move a small, lightweight robot across a table, reported Hackster.
“So in order to become the world’s first human battery and harvest my body heat, I just needed to find a way to get these (generators) stuck all over my body,” said Zetta.
“The bigger temperature difference we see, the more electricity is produced.”
After making the successful set up, Zetta said: “I am the human battery, I’m powering this small robot with my body heat.
One watt per pulse
“I was basically generating one watt per pulse, meaning if I, a human, were an actual battery, it would be a small battery,” he added after completing the experiment.”
Users on social media platforms have responded to the latest experiment, with some calling it a fantastic approach.
“Interesting concept! It seems you put all of them in parallel on your spandex thingy! If you put them in series, you should have like a few volts. Also running in cold air is better! it gets your body warm and the heatsinks cold, and one more important thing: those units have direction, if you flip the cold/hot side, you also reverse the voltage output,” commented a user on YouTube.
“So perhaps you tied them randomly causing them to fight each other. Or perhaps they are just rubbish and don’t make power!!!”
Source: Interesting Engineering
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Thermoelectric Generators Make Human Energy Harvesting a Reality