Spreading water thin, scientists find new power source

Using flowing water, specialised carbon tubes and their abundant grey cells, a team of Indian scientists in Bangalore has generated electric...

Using flowing water, specialised carbon tubes and their abundant grey cells, a team of Indian scientists in Bangalore has generated electric current. The current generated is nano-small but the impact of this discovery huge: it has the potential of powering coronary pace makers and beign used as a sensor in biomedical applications.

Prof Ajay K. Sood, Shanker Ghosh and N. Kumar at the Physics Department of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore have demonstrated, for the first time ever, that tiny electric currents can be generated whenever certain liquids like water are passed through very fine capillaries of carbon — technically known as carbon nano-tubes. The team’s paper outlining this finding has been picked up by the American journal Science in its ‘Science Express’ category — one that’s usually reserved for papers having ‘‘timeliness and importance’’.

In an accompanying commentary, Science says that ‘‘carbon nanotubes can act like mini-hydropower plants, converting mechanical energy into an electrical signal’’. The device is just about one millimeter long. Sood says it took him and Ghosh, his student, no more more than a few weeks and a few thousand rupees to conduct the research.

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While generating power as an ‘‘energy conversion device’’ may only be a futuristic application, the usefulness of this tiny device as an extremely sensitive sensor in bio-medical applications is immense.

The team packed the mini carbon bundles between two metal electrodes and placed them in the centre of a glass cylinder filled with different fluids. The amount of voltage increased with the velocity of the liquid. The tiny device may thus have applications as a fluid sensor, used, for example, in a laboratory on a chip.

One immediate bio-medical application, Sood told The Indian Express, could be the use of bunches of this nano-electricity generating device inside blood vessels to power coronary pace makers.

The blood flowing though the carbon tubes could generate the current necessary to power this life supporting device, making batteries redundant. The group has already conducted some experiments using human blood that have shown encouraging results, Sood added.

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The buzz isn’t just building up in foreign journals. ‘‘It is undoubtedly a great experimental breakthrough,’’ exulted Prof V. S. Ramamurthy, physicist and secretary of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in New Delhi.

When asked about its possible applications, Ramamurthy said, ‘‘If one can cascade millions of these carbon tubes, there’s no doubt that electric power can be generated.’’ He qualified that many a technological hurdle will have to be crossed before converting this discovery into viable technology.

But DST doesn’t seem to have no doubt that the finding will make this leap — it has already applied for an American and Indian patent.

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