Stack of BioCells Converting ATP to Electrical Power and Possible Applications
- PDF / 613,923 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 45 Downloads / 163 Views
0950-D01-03
Stack of BioCells Converting ATP to Electrical Power and Possible Applications Vishnu Baba Sundaresan, Stephen Andrew Sarles, and Donald J. Leo Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, 310 Durham Hall, CIMSS, Blacksburg, VA, 24061-0261 ABSTRACT Plant and animals convert absorbed nutrients into the most readily available form of biochemical energy in cells - Adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Ion transporter proteins in the cell membranes hydrolyze ATP and use the energy from the reaction for ion transport across cell membranes. The BioCell is an energy conversion device inspired by ion transport through cell membranes that converts energy from ATP hydrolysis into electrical power. A membrane similar to a plant cell membrane with red beet H+ATPase and a proton-sucrose cotransporter (SUT4) supported on a porous substrate performs energy conversion. Experiments on a single cell demonstrated that the BioCell behaves like a constant current power source with 10 - 22 kΩ internal resistance. The single cell developed a peak power of 0.7 µW per cm2 of bilayer lipid membrane (BLM) area reconstituted with 1 µl of ATPase at 10 kΩ load in the external circuit. The corresponding peak power output from a single cell is 160 nW for a BLM area of 0.079 cm2 carrying 15 µl of ATPase. The 160 nW of electrical power that could be sourced from the cell at 10 kΩ load (41 mV and 4 µA) is not sufficient to run a low power electronic device and needs to be scaled up to few microwatts. This article discusses our experimental results from stacking a BioCell in series and parallel to develop higher stack voltage and current. We observe that the cell voltage adds linearly by connecting the BioCells in series and a 10-cell stack developed a peak power of 750 nW (500 mV @ 2.5 µA observed at 265 kΩ). The peak power from the stack by connecting the cells in parallel is 1.4 µW available as 125 mV and 11.2 µA for 1kΩ resistive load. The experimental results demonstrate that the power from a single cell can be scaled by connecting them in series and in parallel without appreciable losses. A survey of electronic devices indicated that a minimum of 20 µW will be required to run a demonstration application from a stack and also gives us the direction to scale the power output from a single cell. INTRODUCTION Plant and animal cells convert absorbed nutrients into the most readily available form of biochemical energy ñ Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) [1]. Ion transporter proteins in the cell membranes hydrolyze ATP and use the energy from the reaction for ion transport across cell membranes. The BioCell is an energy conversion device inspired by ion transport through cell membranes that uses charge gradient resulting from hydrolysis of ATP in H+-ATPase to generate an electrical current in an external circuit. The membrane assembly of the BioCell resembles a cell membrane and comprises of red beet ATPase enzyme and SUT4 transporter proteins reconstituted in a bilayer lipid membrane (BLM). The BLM with proteins is supported on a porous track-etched polycar
Data Loading...
