Projects:2016s2-245 RFID in a Light Bulb
Contents
project team
Academic Supevisors
Dr. Said Al-Sarawi
Dr. Damith Ranasinghe
team members
ZEYU WANG RAN YE
Introduction
the development of a permanent power source for self-sustainable wireless sensor networks is essential in order to reduce the maintenance costs and increase the operational time of sensor nodes. Accordingly,over the past decade researchers have actively studied various energy harvesters that generate power form sources such as ambient light, heat, motion, electromagnetic waves and other unused sources of energy. One energy harvester driven by ambient vibrations has attracted special attention because it can easily gain energy form sources of movement such as human physical motion. This project states a liquid-based electrostatic energy harvester that converts the mechanical energy of human-motion-induced vibrations to electrical energy.
Aims
Aims
This paper presents a kinetic energy electrostatic harvester with electret as voltage source and liquid-based structure, which converts the mechanical energy in a low working frequency vibration to electrical energy. Moreover, it addresses the discharge issue of electret to improving charge storage stability of electrets in liquid-based environment. Extending from the theoretical research, the prototype of energy harvester is fabricated in proposed structure and is tested its performance in desirable low frequency range. In addition, the high efficiency circuit is necessary in energy conversion that is as important as the capacitor part.
background
Comparing to conventional energy source, energy harvester provides sustainable and clean energy source. Comparing to piezoelectric energy harvester and electromagnetic energy harvester, electrostatic energy harvester has high output voltages; their components are built in low-cost parts, is easy to adjust the coupling coefficient and reaches high coupling coefficients, and increases capacitances through the reduction of size. These advantages are significant in small-scale energy harvester and in low frequency range operation.
