Body powered thermoelectric systems

Abstract

Great interest exists for and progress has be made in the effective utilization of the human body as a possible power supply in hopes of powering such applications as sensors and continuously monitoring medical devices [1]. This report furthers into the area of thermal energy harvesting, which focuses on using the temperature differential generated between the human body and the ambient environment to generate power. More specifically, a body-powered, thermoelectric-based power supply and system will be introduced and examined, with hopes that this technology will be utilized alongside low-power, medical monitoring applications in order to achieve self-sufficiency. This report also analyzes the performance of existing thermoelectric-based body-powered energy harvesting applications and compares that with the new design introduced in this work. The new designs were able to output upwards of 25[mu]W/cm2 or, equivalently, 280µW for the entire heat sink system. Additionally, this report details the physics associated with thermoelectric modules, addresses the issues with modern thermoelectric heat-sinks, introduces two new types of wearable, conformal heat sinks, quantifies the performance of the body-powered thermoelectric supply, tests a flexible EKG processing board, and analyzes future paths for this project.