An Intravascular Micro Turbine Generator

Abstract

In order to avoid the drive line infection of implantable devices and the surgical treatment for battery replacement, an intravascular micro turbine generator using blood flow, has been proposed and developed. The micro generator consisting of a micro turbine, a magnetic fluid (MF) seal, a stent, and an electrical generator is inserted by catheter into a descending aorta, which is able to reduce the invasiveness to patients. The experimental results using a prototype generator placed in a mock circuit loop showed that the resisting pressure of the MF seal was more than 25 kPa at 2,000 rpm and the generated power was 0.12 mW under a pulsatile flow condition.