Team 764H

Heat Utilizing Hearing Aids

 

An estimated 500 people in the world experience hearing loss; for 360 million, this loss in physically disabling. People wear hearing aids in order to combat this, but the batteries are not always reliable. This is where the heat utilizing hearing aids come in, a device that recharges by converting body heat into an electrical charge. Not only will this product help current users, but it will be able to reach people in all corners of the world, even those that lack money or access to electricity.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Modern hearing aids, function around three main components: a microphone, an amplifier, and a speaker. The microphone picks up noise and transmits it to an amplifier, which serves to make that noise louder. From there, the sound reaches the speakers, traveling through the earhook and earmold and into the person’s ear, where sensory hair cells pick up vibrations and convert them to neurosignals. This is how the brain registers sound.

 

A Heat Utilizing Hearing Aid (pictured above) functions just like a normal hearing aid, but its source of power comes from the wearer. Thermoelectric generators capture excess body heat and convert it to electricity, effectively recharging the batteries.