Electric battery from an electric eel. Free Technical Library News

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Electric battery from an electric eel

18.12.2017

Researchers from the University of Michigan and Friborg have succeeded in constructing a current source that works on the same principle as the electric organ of an electric eel. In acne, the electrical organs are made up of many cells through which flows positive potassium and sodium ions; as a result, each cell has a positively charged pole (directed towards the head of the fish) and a negatively charged pole (directed towards the tail). A voltage of about 150 millivolts is created in each cell, but all together, stacked one after another, like batteries, they generate hundreds and hundreds of volts.

Scientists have done something similar. Instead of living cells, they used cells filled with a polymer hydrogel that retains water. The hydrogel in the cells holds either pure water or water with salts that decompose in solution into positive and negative ions. The cell walls are made of a semi-permeable membrane that allows these ions to pass back and forth. When the cells come into contact with each other, the ions in them begin to move in different directions, and an electrical voltage arises.

Hydrogels in cells differ in their own composition and in the composition of the solutions they hold; when compared with electric cells of eels, then four cells correspond to one cell. One block of four cells gives from 130 to 185 millivolts, in the experiment it was possible to make a large "battery" of several hundred cells, which in total gave 110 volts.

It is assumed that such batteries can be used to power various biomedical devices, and, moreover, that such batteries can use the natural charge of some internal tissues and organs. "Eel-like" batteries are more flexible and easier to make biocompatible so they don't irritate living cells. The problem, however, is that so far the voltage they give is not very high, although the inventors believe that in the near future they will be able to make their batteries generate a current of the same voltage as real electric eels.

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