Monday, April 13, 2009

Biological Nanobot Power System: Thermodynamic or Piezoelectric Bellows

For a nanobot that might stay inside a living being for medicinal/maintenance purposes, a renewable power system could be designed to align with natural biological cycles. Below, I've illustrated a piezoelectric material that could be pressed like a bellows to charge a battery, running the tiny, low-power flagella, sensor systems, and cpu. The bellows could be pumped multiple ways, for instance:

1) Thermodynamic drive - For every circuit through the blood stream, the nanobot would be exposed to inner and outer temperatures - maybe 98.6 degF in the lungs and 95 degF in the capillaries at the skin. The "bio-activated bellows" could be a material designed to change phases from crystalline to liquid between those temperatures, thus expanding and contracting as it travels through the body.

2) Pressure drive - When the nanobot gets pumped out of the heart, it would be squeezed in the flow at a higher pressure. The "bio-activated bellows" could be a gas-filled membrane that contracts onto the piezoelectric when it cycles through the heart chambers.


CATEGORY: Nanotechnology / Medicine / Biological
IDEATION: 2007

8 comments:

  1. Omg Dave. You are way too smart for my pea brain. My brain stopped dead at "piezoelectric". Srsly, I tried a couple more times and the words just swam together and I think my brain almost exploded (for realz).
    For not reading books, I unhappily have to admit that you got some impressive brains. Maybe I'll try reading again in the morning when my cranium is fresh and I'll be able to understand all this smart-person mumbo jumbo! :)

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  2. shoot girl - you can do it - just sound it out: "pee-ayes-oh-electric."
    on the other hand, i'm at a loss for some of the vocabulary you're using...what does "srsly" mean?...
    ha - just kidding =)

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  3. Hahahha. Dude. You know how I was thinking in my head it was pronounced? Pie-zoe-lectric.

    But seriously (or should I say srsly), where do you come up with this stuff?!? I definitely think this disproves your theory about be 16th Indian. Maybe if you were talking about horses & bow & arrows. But not nanobots and bio-activated bellows. I call a phony. No more than 1/18 Indian *bolded exclamation point*

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  4. Where did you get those temps??? Why do you know any of these words??? Why do you also know how to photoshop it all??? And, ditto what Gretchen said with the srslies and for realzes. I'm going over to Ms. Hooper's blog so I can read about muppet songs or something delectable from the oven. Jen out.

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  5. haha...so much for vigorous scientific debate. =)

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  6. I am proud to say that when I read this today, it didn't seem that difficult. Maybe it was the Twizzler Rope and my resulting incoming sugar intake that brought my brain up to speed. I don't know.

    Still, I'm not debating here. More trying to figure out if you drew that picture and with what application. Jen's-procrastination-on-next-e-letter out.

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  7. heya jen,

    there are a couple ways i do the pictures for this blog. if it's a simpler illustration, i look for clip art or images that i can clooge together and edit with "gimp" (the freeware version of photoshop - http://www.gimp.org/).

    if it's something less obvious that i have to draw, i'll draw it out on a pad with sketch markers and scan it in. then i add color and spruce it up in "gimp" again.

    occasionally i'll use google sketchup (a freeware 3D CAD program - http://sketchup.google.com/)

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  8. Dave - it just occurred to me that you wouldn't even need this device to travel through the heart to be powered. The blood pressure in major arteries (and probably veins, too) changes significantly enough that you could probably power it in many locations through the pressure method. There are also devices in production now that get energy solely through vibrations - there might be enough movement in the human body's bloodstream to power it that way. I had an idea awhile back for powering a pacemaker by attaching something to the heart - the kinetic energy generated there is unbelievable.

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