Scientists report that chemicals that are not controlled by a United Nations treaty designed to protect the Ozone Layer are contributing to ozone depletion.
When you’re on the go and your smartphone battery is low, in the not-so-distant future you could charge it simply by plugging it into your shoe.
An innovative energy harvesting and storage technology developed by University of Wisconsin–Madison mechanical engineers could reduce our reliance on the batteries in our mobile devices, ensuring we have power for our devices no matter where we are.
In a paper published Nov. 16, 2015, in the journal Scientific Reports, Tom Krupenkin, a professor of mechanical engineering at UW–Madison, and J. Ashley Taylor, a senior scientist in UW–Madison’s Mechanical Engineering Department, described an energy-harvesting technology that’s particularly well suited for capturing the energy of human motion to power mobile electronic devices.
The technology could enable a footwear-embedded energy harvester that captures energy produced by humans during walking and stores it for later use.
Power-generating shoes could be especially useful for the military, as soldiers currently carry heavy batteries to power their radios, GPS units and night-vision goggles in the field. The advance could provide a source of power to people in remote areas and developing countries that lack adequate electrical power grids.
“Human walking carries a lot of energy,” Krupenkin says. “Theoretical estimates show that it can produce up to 10 watts per shoe, and that energy is just wasted as heat. A total of 20 watts from walking is not a small thing, especially compared to the power requirements of the majority of modern mobile devices.”
Krupenkin says tapping into just a small amount of that energy is enough to power a wide range of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptop computers and flashlights. For example, a typical smartphone requires less than two watts.
However, traditional approaches to energy harvesting and conversion don’t work well for the relatively small displacements and large forces of footfalls, according to the researchers.
“So we’ve been developing new methods of directly converting mechanical motion into electrical energy that are appropriate for this type of application,” Krupenkin says.
The researchers’ new energy-harvesting technology takes advantage of “reverse electrowetting,” a phenomenon that Krupenkin and Taylor pioneered in 2011. With this approach, as a conductive liquid interacts with a nanofilm-coated surface, the mechanical energy is directly converted into electrical energy.
The reverse electrowetting method can generate usable power, but it requires an energy source with a reasonably high frequency — such as a mechanical source that’s vibrating or rotating quickly.
“Yet our environment is full of low-frequency mechanical energy sources such as human and machine motion, and our goal is to be able to draw energy from these types of low-frequency energy sources,” Krupenkin says. “So reverse electrowetting by itself didn’t solve one of the problems we had.”
To overcome this, the researchers developed what they call the “bubbler” method, which they described in their Scientific Reports study. The bubbler method combines reverse electrowetting with bubble growth and collapse.
The researchers’ bubbler device — which contains no moving mechanical parts — consists of two flat plates separated by a small gap filled with a conductive liquid. The bottom plate is covered with tiny holes through which pressurized gas forms bubbles. The bubbles grow until they’re large enough to touch the top plate, which causes the bubble to collapse.
The speedy, repetitive growth and collapse of bubbles pushes the conductive fluid back and forth, generating electrical charge.
“The high frequency that you need for efficient energy conversion isn’t coming from your mechanical energy source but instead, it’s an internal property of this bubbler approach,” Krupenkin says.
The researchers say their bubbler method can potentially generate high power densities — lots of watts relative to surface area in the generator — which enables smaller and lighter energy-harvesting devices that can be coupled to a broad range of energy sources.
The proof-of-concept bubbler device generated around 10 watts per square meter in preliminary experiments, and theoretical estimates show that up to 10 kilowatts per square meter might be possible, according to Krupenkin.
“The bubbler really shines at producing high power densities,” he says. “For this type of mechanical energy harvesting, the bubbler has a promise to achieve by far the highest power density ever demonstrated.”
Learn more: Power walk: Footsteps could charge mobile electronics
The Latest on: Energy harvesting
via Google News
The Latest on: Energy harvesting
- Energy Harvesting Market | Size, Growth, Demand, Scope, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022-2032on July 27, 2022 at 11:52 pm
The global energy harvesting market is projected to record a CAGR of 7.5% from 2022-2032. “A number of newly developed and efficient energy applications, broad acceptance of renewable energy sources, ...
- Your next smart lock could ditch the battery by harvesting energy from your phoneon July 22, 2022 at 5:00 am
It’s got circuits to recognize your NFC phone, harvest its power, and drive the smart lock’s motor. And it’s got both embedded security features and a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 CPU to verify that you and ...
- Harvesting rain energyon July 21, 2022 at 12:23 am
Rain has potential as an energy source and an alternative way of generating electricity. Harvesting the energy of rain provides a lot of advantages. First and foremost, rainwater energy harvesting ...
- Wiegand Wire Enables Energy Harvesting, Motion Sensingon July 20, 2022 at 10:35 am
By manipulating the magnetic properties of Vicalloy wire, devices that can harvest energy and sense motion have been created. This feature originally appeared in the ebook Automation 2022: IIoT and ...
- Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Market to Grow with a Significant CAGR During the forecast period 2022-2028| Exclusive Report Spread Across 91 Pageson July 19, 2022 at 4:41 am
Jul 18, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- [91 Report Pages] "Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Market" Insights 2022 By Types (Piezoelectric Generation, Solar Power Generation, Thermoelectric Generation ...
- Solar Energy Harvesting Trees Market Research Insights With Swot Analysis By Key Futuristic Trends, New Opportunities, And Forecast To 2028on July 15, 2022 at 5:23 am
Global Solar Energy Harvesting Trees Market Report provides a detailed Solar Energy Harvesting Trees Industry overview along with the analysis of Cost Structure, Supply Chain, Development ...
- SmartMetric Has Developed Powerful Energy Harvesting to Provide Additional Power Options to Its Powered Use Anywhere Biometric Credit Cardon July 12, 2022 at 3:27 pm
NEW YORK, July 12, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME): Building on its unique hybrid solid state battery and rapid recharge internal to the card, power management system ...
- SmartMetric Has Developed Powerful Energy Harvesting to Provide Additional Power Options to Its Powered Use Anywhere Biometric Credit Cardon July 12, 2022 at 1:33 pm
The theoretical harvesting of energy from the ether is something that dates back to the renowned scientist Nikola Tesla. "While our energy harvesting doesn't extract power from atmospheric ...
- SmartMetric Has Developed Powerful Energy Harvesting to Provide Additional Power Options to Its Powered Use Anywhere Biometric Credit Cardon July 12, 2022 at 8:01 am
NEW YORK, July 12, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME): Building on its unique hybrid solid state battery and rapid recharge internal to the card, power management system, ...
- SmartMetric Has Developed Powerful Energy Harvesting to Provide Additional Power Options to Its Powered Use Anywhere Biometric Credit Cardon July 12, 2022 at 7:09 am
SmartMetric, Inc. (OTCQB: SMME): Building on its unique hybrid solid state battery and rapid recharge internal to the card, power management system, SmartMetric has successfully added to its card ...
via Bing News