Nuclear Batteries for Medical Use

Why nuclear?

Perhaps it will be closer implant to a bomb.

have you ever heard about implanted pacemakers and what batteries did they use

the autonomous of this device is a must, what is more no cables ,no external device must be carried from the patient who should live a more normal life

as it is a complete implantable device it should be autonomous by any external source what is more, do you think it is right for a patient with that kidney to carry the battery out side his/her body with cables that come out from his /her skin?

It is not necessary to bring out the leads. What can be done is to put a pick up coil inside the body and power oscillator outside the body to inject power. Kidney does not work all the time so one can sit near a power point for a while to charge internal circuit and once dialysis is over, one can walk freely. Perhaps every two or three hour intervals or after drinking fluid one need to do it for an hour as within half an hour the fluid will enter the blood system from large intestine. All fluid will enter the blood system and blood pressure will increase. So you can say after half an hour after taking fluid one can go for kidney function near some power point or pocket battery source. Make sure that person is not near any major RF source like RF oven etc or even powerful radio station transmission tower. Inside circuit to be designed in protective matter from spurious power sources. Perhaps a tunned circuit will work better.

Look for more on how pacemaker are powered from outside when internal battery fails. Some credit cards are also wireless powered.

First of all thank you for your interested .frankly,i have thought about charging a capacitor but the concept of my work is the device to be on 24h/day as it needs to avoid any malfunction of the filter,moreover not to disturb patient to do anything but what a normal person do.

what is the power required by membrane pump and do you really need power as blood is already at pressure and water must flow out easily. Unless you tell the design in details, do not expect exact reply.

The smallest nuclear battery I've seen weighted 220KGs. If you would provide your circuit that you are thinking of powering we could consider that more reasonably.

Look for smoke sensors, beta emitters, direct electrons charging on a capacitor using a Farady cup. It may weight only few grams.

in 1970-1980 or so the implanted pacemaker used nuclear batteries with out 220kg .these batteries are what i need.Cornell university has developed a tiny atomic battery but no reply did they give me.

Read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery

I worked at a company in the 70's that made isotopic (nuclear) batteries for a pacemaker. The company was Coratomic and is now out of business. Two other companies that I know of marketed nuclear powered pacemakers Medtronic and Cordis. The batteries were all of similar design in that they used Plutonium 238 and generated power using a thermoelectric module to harness the heat from the decay. Pacemakers do not require much energy and for your application this may be a limiting factor. Also the emitted radiation while within limits was significant and increased over time (many years) from the daughter products of decay. Also the regulatory issues about overseas and air travel etc. were a detrimental factor. The introduction of lithium batteries in the late 70's and the disaster at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant as well as the high cost finally killed the nuclear pacemaker industry.

The current state of the art is to use advanced rechargeable lithium batteries for high power applications that would deplete a conventional lithium battery and require surgery to replace the battery. As the other gentleman suggested the recharge is typically performed by placing a coil over a coil that is implanted under the skin and recharging with a RF signal (check regulatory issues for frequency to avoid interference issues). Some of the newest rechargeable batteries for implant use have relatively high capacity and can handle a short high current recharge. Implantable battery technology is constantly being researched as is non-implantable batteries to improve the power density. The largest company that makes implantable batteries in the US is Wilson Greatbatch. Hope that your project is successful an implantable artifical kidney would be a help to many people.

Lithium may sound much better now. It is also much easier now to replace the battery with laproscopic surgery that does not leave big hole in the body and one can go back to work after small surgery which may be needed after 10 years of implant.

Out entire body system is a battery of Sodium and Potassium salts. However, it has never been used for deriving energy for external circuits. Muscles work on using lots of charge and static polarization and contraction. Stomach get highly acidic to pH 2 level. I wonder if some of these can be used to take small power. There can also be some mechanical energy storage device which can store energy on body motion, like old mechanical automatic watch. Putting electrodes in blood system I will not advice as injection of ions may be harmful. Perhaps Silver, Gold and Platinum electrodes may be less harmful. Eel can collect huge charge and pump it to enemy to kill. We may also derive charge from our body if we know how to do it.

You can also go here and to get clear picture of the nuclear battery design

http://www.tfot.info/content/view/76/64/

hello athmio,

what I once read about your idea of implanting such atomic battery was that these devices were used in the early 60`s and 70`s. But their problem was that even the light increase of temperature in their near surrounding damaged the cells and lead to such big problems that they were no longer used.

I wouls also prefer charging by coils.

Best regards
uweka