Quinone Battery to make solar and wind power cheaper

We all know that biggest hurdle for solar and wind energy popularity is their cost of batteries.If cost of storage becomes cheaper by some innovation in battery manufacturing, renewable energy can become great competitor for traditional sources of energy such as coal.


Why storage of electricity is important for renewable energy and not for conventional energy?
 With conventional sources, we get constant supply of electricity and because energy source can be supplied as per need but in renewable energy, energy source is not in our hand and can't be supplied constantly and that's why storage plays very vital role in renewable energy. To understand its importance more, we can also take example of wind farm, which generate electricity 24x7 while we require more electricity at the day time in comparison to night. So, extra energy generated at the night time can be stored and supplied latter when required.

What is the solution?

Harvard University researches developed new type of battery with the help of organic material Quinone on the negative side and bromine which is toxic in nature on the positive side. Now scientist are finding ways to replace bromine with some other form of organic material. Quinone can be synthesized from the plant called Rhubarb.Moreover, once functional, these new batteries will reduce the cost of batteries by 2/3 of their current cost well below the $100 per kilowatt-hour benchmark set by United States Department of Energy.

Solar powered boats

Boat is important mode of transportation on water.Nonetheless, We also use it for tourism purposes to explore beautiful places,rivers and beaches. Project, we are going to discuss today is about 2-stroke engine boats we usually see on popular tourist destinations.2-stroke engines are most common form of engines used in boats but they are far more polluting than engines used in cars.With toxic fumes they spew, they are destroying our climate gradually. Moreover, this engine emits Sulfur di oxide gas which later react with oxygen found in water to produce sulfuric acid. Sulphuric Acid is harmful for the species inside the water as well as for surroundings.
In this post, we will see, how we can use solar energy in boat to replace these traditional fuel engines.Converting these engines to electric engine helps our environment and also help us to protect our resources.

Before we discuss any further, first we should look for other renewable energy sources we can use:
Wind Power :Though, It is a good option and has been used from long time back but we have two basic problems with wind powered small boat,First it requires lot of space inside the boat and second it is not very efficient.


Pedal : We can also consider using pedal boat but with pedal boat we can't travel long distances.

Hybrid(Electric + Diesel): This can be a great alternative but requires great amount of technical knowledge and processors to decide when to shift between electric to diesel and vice-versa.

Electric Boat : They solve many of the above mentioned problems and that's why we select this option, but it has problems of its own.First major problem with electric engines is their energy source itself which is  electricity.Water is good conductor and we should find a ways to make sure that electricity and water get separate always.

Things to consider:

Make your boat as lighter as you can: Remove all the unnecessary mass from the boat.

Powering for whole day of use: To make it attractive option, we need to power its engine with sufficient electricity for 24 x 7 travelling.To do so, we will require constant energy source which is solar energy and great energy storage unit which is our battery. To capture sunlight we requires solar cells which themselves have associated problems of weight and size. A medium size solar cell weights around 7 kg.So, if we use more solar cells, it will increase the mass which corresponds to more electricity consumption. To, somewhat solve this problem we can use tilting mechanism to capture more electricity from lesser cells..

Water proof batteries: When we travel on the water, their would be occasions when our batteries get wet, so it absolutely necessary to use water proof batteries.

Efficient motor: More efficient our motor, lesser the requirement of solar cells and  batteries.

Related Video:


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Nanowires new innovation in Solar Energy

In last post, we discussed about "carbon solar cell" which is manufactured using 100 % carbon(widely available and cheaper to use). In that post, we discussed about nanotechnology and how carbon changes its behaviour on nano scale .Today, we will see how we can use nanotechnology with gallium arsenide(better alternative to silicon in solar cell).

Gallium Arsenide:

Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a compound of the elements gallium and arsenic. It is a III/V semiconductor, and is used in the manufacturing of solar cells since 1970, when it was first introduced by Zhores Alferov in the USSR.In the early 1980s, the efficiency of the best GaAs solar cells surpassed that of silicon solar cells.These cells has also being used in rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are exploring Mars' surface.


Concept:
According to researcher Anna Fontcuberta i Morral,inspiration of  building solar cell with vertical nanowires came into her mind by observing trees.Trees captures their sunlight from all sides(360 degree) by standing perpendicular from the ground but in our traditional cells we are doing exactly opposite and using horizontal way of capturing light and that makes our cells less effecient.In her experiment she uses nano-wires which is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10^-9 meters).Nanowires requires less material therefore less money( If we require 40 kg in traditional method, in nanotechnology we will need only 40 grams).Nanowires are filamentary crystals with a very high ratio of length to diameter, the latter being in the nanometer range. Semiconductor nanowires are of significant interest from a fundamental point of view as they exhibit new physical and chemical properties owing to their large surface-to-volume ratio, low dimensionality and confinement in one dimension.

Related Video:


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Carbon Solar Cells

Though, we have discussed a lot about solar energy projects, but solar energy is not economically viable for our daily use because of increasingly expensive materials used in traditional solar cells made up of silicon, which is not available in abundance and hence very costly. Today, we will discuss about carbon solar cells and how to use them to built complete carbon solar cells?


Why Carbon ?

"Carbon has the potential to deliver high performance at a low cost," said study senior author Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. According to Professor Bao, in the future we can use solar cells,which are coated on the surface of buildings, on windows or on cars to generate electricity

How is it possible?

When we take elements into their nano scale, their properties start to change and  it happens with carbon too.Carbon nanotubes have great electrical conductivity. Stanford researches found that, they can use nanotechnology to build new type of solar cells by just using carbon.It consists of mainly three parts,
Two Electrodes made up of Carbon Nano tubes(graphene – sheets of carbon that are one atom thick –and single-walled carbon nanotubes that are 10,000 times narrower than a human hair) instead of expensive ITO(Indium Tin Oxide) and one Active Layer made of buckyballs(soccer ball-shaped molecules with carbon atoms at each vertex just 1 nano-meter of diameter).

Buckyball(C60):

It is a spherical football shaped fullerene molecule.
Formula: C60.

Graphene:

It is a substance composed of pure carbon, with atoms arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern similar to graphite, but in a one-atom thick sheet.

Carbon nanotubes:

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure.

Problems:

Basic problem with carbon solar cells is their efficiency which is only 1 Percent in comparison to silicon cells with 20 Percent efficiency.People working with this technology beleives that they can increase these cells efficiency significantly by implementing some minute changes during its manufacturing.

Advantages:
Their are many advantage of using carbon cells such as

Stanford Page: Build the first all carbon solar cell



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Solar Projects

Solar Powered automatic rain operated wiper

We have discussed many projects related to solar energy and we are going to discuss many more in next few months.In this post we will see how we can use sun light in automobile.  

Though this project has been implemented by many companies, it would be great to build one for yourself in a lab or as your final year project.When I was thinking about this project , I thought it would be great if we can build it as a extension of rain sensor wipers project idea. 

It is very easy to build and needs very few components. Rain Operated Motor consists of conduction sensor(Tough Sensor) circuit, Control Unit, Wiper Motor and Glass Frame.

Concept:

We all know that wipers need electricity to move and this electricity has been supplied by battery inside a car. So, to move wiper using solar power, you just need to supply electricity to this battery or some smaller battery(if you want independent system) using solar panels.

Older System

Wipers <-----Battery<-----Car Engine

Solar Powered Wipers

Wipers<-----Battery<-------Solar Panels<-----Sun Light

To optimize performance , you can use rain sensor wiper as shown in this video:

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Pedal Powered Juicer Grinder

A juicer is a tool for separating juice from fruits, herbs, leafy greens and other types of vegetables from its pulp in a process called juicing. In separating the pulp, juicers concentrate the nutrition naturally present in fruits and vegetables and allows the body to more easily absorb the nutrition than digesting the solid produce. The use of juicers also makes it easier to consume more raw produce.

Electric Juicer is very common part of our life. But , do you know how much electricity we consume while juicing! if we start using pedal powered juicers,we will not only save large amount of electricity but our body would get some exercise too.

This project idea is for mechanical  and physics students.


Is it commercial viable?

Yes , it is , in New York I have seen it implemented where customer gets discount if he pedals his juice himself.

How to build my own?

Its simple, you need to buy some old juicer(I recommend sugar cane juicer for this project) and connect it with your bicycle instead of electric motor using belt. Video shown below will give you some idea about that.



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Water fuel Power Generation System

 Is it possible to use water to power our cars?

Some people claim that it is possible and done before and other thinks, it has never been done and would need more time before this actually happen. But all of them believe that someday we can run our cars on water. I found this project idea interesting enough to discuss with you. If you are believer of  water fuel cell invented by American Stanley Allen Meyer.Then you should try this project and see whether we can run our cars on water or if we can generate power using water fuel cells? 

I have never used water fuel cell myself and Stanley Meyer also lost his case in US Court when he found guilty of fraud.Still I want you to do some research on this topic because many people believes that Stanley finding were true and these fuel cells are going to be future and would solve our energy needs. 

Concept:
As we all know, opposite charges attract, so when we put anode and cathode into the H20, the positive charged hydrogen are attracted by cathode and negative charged oxygen is attracted by anode. Hence, HH and O bonds break to form HHO. This HHO can be supplied directly into Internal Combustion engines for moving the engine shaft.
This process can produce mechanical energy. Furthermore, this mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy by using D.C generator. 30% of power from generator is consumed by electrolysis process and remaining 70% is for our applications.

Useful Links:
Electrolysis of Water
What are Fuel Cells ?
Animation of Fuel Cells

Related PDF:
WFPGS
 Fuel Cell Cars





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Light Weight floating Wind Turbine

A floating wind turbine is an offshore wind turbine mounted on a floating structure that allows the turbine to generate electricity or pump water in water depths where bottom-mounted towers are not feasible.

Further more, wind is more powerful over the sea in comparison to land. Though their are many ways we can use these turbines,but today we will see how we can use them for pumping water.


Farmers around the world consumes large amount of fresh water for their farming.Not only that,at some places of Africa and Asia, their only source of fresh water is rain or tube wells.Farm Pond project, we discussed yesterday can help them to store rain water on their farm itself. Even though,  farm ponds with drip irrigation solves the problem of water shortage for farmers but still they need to pump out this water for irrigation and light weight floating wind turbine pump can be used here.

Pumping at farms usually done by traditional methods such as electric pump or diesel pumps.But as our focus is to make our farming green, we can use wind or solar powered pump discussed earlier on this blog. Though any of these methods can be used but floating wind turbine would be much better alternative, particularly for farm pond pumping.

How it works?

Its working is similar to traditional wind mills with only difference is its free flowing nature.It base is not fixed and it floats and changes its direction according to wind.



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Pedal Powered Water Filter

Pure water is precious and its value is known to those people who do not get it.According to the WHO, such disease account for an estimated 4.1% of the total DALY(Disability-adjusted life year) global burden of disease, and cause about 1.8 million human deaths annually.Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms that most commonly are transmitted in contaminated fresh water. In my last post, I discussed about how we can purify it with solar energy.Though in summer solar water purifier is good option but in winter or rainy season it becomes very inefficient and slow.

We need a system which can work whole year whether it is day or night. Pedal Powered water filter is one of such solution. It is green and pollution free method of purifying water using human labor.

How it works?

We all know how nature filters our water. It evaporates dirty or sea water and later condenses it in the form of rain which is pure drinking water. Pedal powered water purifier works on the same concept. In this project we pedal our bicycle to transform water into vapor and later condense it to get clean water.


Concept: 

This project consists of two chambers,copper tube and pipe, one chamber is for dirty water called tank and second one is tiny boiler.Both of these chambers are connected using pipe. When we fill our tank with dirty water,as pressure of dirty water increases,water starts to transfer from tank to boiler using pipe connected to both of them. In boiler, water gets heated up to the boiling point using pedal powered generator.Water Vapor generated in this process passes through tank of dirty water using copper tube and later to outlet.Advantage of passing water through dirty water chamber is that,it preheats the dirty water and condense itself to provide us clean water. Video show below has complete explanation.

Related PDF:
The Portable Bicycle Ultra-Filtration Water Treatment System
Water Purification Project
University of Michigan complete project Report



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Solar Powered Water Pumps

This month we discussed lot of projects about irrigation and how we can make it greener. This idea of solar powered pump is also a part of that series which includes drip irrigation using wind energy and mechanical sprayer.Solar pump is a useful device for irrigation. In my opinion at hot places solar energy is much better than traditional methods because it works during day time and consumes no electricity or any fuel.


Is it viable?

Yes, it has already been implemented in some part of Africa and according to Stanford study it is profitable too.Moreover, according to Science daily article the first solar-powered irrigation system at the U.S. National Arboretum was installed by students from Alfred State College and workshop participants in 2009.

Pumping can be done using traditional method we used in windmill pump, with only difference is here we will use dc motor to power our pump instead of wind.

 

When photovoltaic modules(1800 Watts) are exposed to sun it generates D.C. Power and with this power a 2 H.P. D.C.
mono block pump operates. It is a very useful device for irrigation where water table is around 6-7 meters ( 20-25 ft.)

Related PDF:

Pumping Water for Irrigation Using Solar Energy

Problems with solar pump and their solutions:

a)We can’t use it at night. The only solution of this problem is storing energy generated in the noon to use it at night. This can be done in two ways:

1. Battery Storage: Batteries help you to store solar energy into electrical energy. Amount of needed batteries and size of solar panels depends on the irrigation area. 
2. Store water at height: Here we convert solar energy into potential energy. To pump the water at height you will need large energy. To overcome this problem we can use two solar pumps, one to get water out from the tank and second one is used to transfer this water to height.

b)It is Costly:
Implementation of this project on large scale is costly.1800 Watts solar panel would cost you around $8 890.8 depending upon your locale and government subsidies.
Even though,this technology is costly but it mostly depends on the individual requirements.It can be cost effective if implemented wisely with individual specific requirements such as Weather, Well depth, Storage Tank, Government subsidies etc etc. Moreover with the use of drip irrigation system we will need very less water to pump and proportionally less solar power.

How it works?
Solar energy comes in small packages called photons. These photons hit the outer level electrons in the photovoltaic cells like the flappers hit the metal ball in the pin ball machine. The dislocated electrons form the electrical current. This current is used to power dc motor attached to the water pump.



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Solar Turbine Generator

Solar turbine generators generate electricity in similar way as any other generator; the only difference is that they use sun light in the place of other sources such as coal, wood or petroleum gases.

We had discussed in solar powered steam engines that how we can use sun energy to power our engines. This project idea is extension of that talk.  If we can connect solar powered engine to spin turbine connected to magnets and coil, we can able to generate electricity.


How it works?

As we have discussed in that post how solar energy can be used produce steam. This steam, when connected to steam engine, would rotate the generator to produce electricity.

Usually solar powered steam engines are slow to start and it needs large parabolic mirror even for producing small amount of electricity. Solution of this problem can be hybrid engines powered by both sun light and bio gas. If we put bio gas burner to help sun light to heat water, we would get very efficient and quick to start engine and gradually we can adjust the bio gas supply according to our need.

Though I have seen many solar energy powered steam engine, this hybrid engine(Solar and Bio gas) with steam is unique idea and according to me not implemented yet.



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Bio gas powered water heater

Hot water is essential part of human life. During winters, we all need it for our daily activities such as bathing and cleaning. To boil water we use various sources such as coal, petroleum fuel, wood, gas and electricity but most of our methods release greenhouse gases.

Nowadays, Gas geezers are very popular because of their efficiency.  Gas geezers or water heaters burn gas instead of electricity as their heat supplier. There are two types of gas water heaters: With water storage tank and Without water tanks. We can use any from them but I would suggest tank less heater because using it , we would get continuous supply of hot water and it is energy efficient too.


Advantage of using Gas:

Saves your utility bill and reduce green house emission.

What we are trying to achieve?

If we use bio gas instead of polluting gas such as LPG or Natural gas we would able to control green house emission as well as save some money. Moreover, because bio gas can be produced at home using waste, we perform waste management too. The only thing you need to do is to replace your water heater heat source from natural gas cylinder to bio gas. 

What is Bio Gas?

This is a gas produced by biological breakdown of organic matter. The good news is that it contains 50 to 75 percent of methane which is highly inflammable gas and because of that we can use bio gas to power our heater.

Related Video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UafRz3QeO8

How to build my own bio gas plant?

I had already explained it on my post Bio gas project with some very useful links. You can read it from here.

How to implement?

We will need two tanks , one to containn cow mud and other much larger tank to store bio gas that manufactured. Bio gas is highly inflammable gas, so we would need storage tank open from one side and completely submerged in water with open side facing downwards.

When storage tank started to fill, it would gradually move upward.

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Wind Mill Water Pump

We have discussed Drip irrigation powered by wind mill. I told you to use wind powered pump at the place of traditional one. Today we will move one step forward and find out how? In the meanwhile, I would also share some related videos.  So, let’s begin our journey of windmill pump:

Advantages of using windmill pump?

• It powers itself from green energy.
• According to many estimates, it can recover its cost in 5 years.
• It can be used anywhere, even in areas where electricity has not reached yet.
• If used with drip irrigation, it works automatically without human intervention.

How wind mill pump works?

Windmill revolves with the force of wind and that revolving energy is used to pump the water out from the tank.

Wind mill pump consists of four important components:

1. Wind mill
2. Crankshaft
3. PVC Pipe
4.  “One way valve” right at the bottom of the pipe

Concept:



Windmill rotates crankshaft which push and pull the rod attached in up and down motion. This rod contains in a long pipe with one way valve at the bottom. When windmill pulls the rod, water from the tank get sucked into the pipe, but when it pushes the rod down, one way valve doesn’t allow the water stored in the pipe to return. This way, with the help of continuous up and down motion, pipe starts to fill up and eventually reaches to the height and water comes out.

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Generating Electricity from Waste water

Tons and tons of waste dumped upon our mother earth each day. This waste not only causes damage to our environment but has health risk too. To use this water again, our governments are using water treatment plants. Project Idea we are going to discuss today would use these plants to power our homes.

How?

We all know that, in nature different materials biodegrade at different rates. It is a chemical dissolution of materials by bacteria or other biological means. Bacteria in the presence of oxygen produce carbon dioxide and water, but when we stop the supply of oxygen they start to produce electrons and protons.  They were first found by Professor M.C. Potter in 1911. When we use them to generate electricity in a cell, this cell is called as Microbial fuel cell.

What is Microbial fuel cell?

It consists of anode and cathode separated by ion exchange membrane. Ion exchange membrane allows exchange of ions between two electrolytes.

We had discussed about microbial fuel cell before. Today we will discuss how waste water can be used to feed the fuel cell while treating it.

How it works?

Waste water is placed in an isolated chamber to stop oxygen entering it, thus compelling the micro-organism to use anaerobic respiration. As a result, bacteria start producing electrons. These Electrons are transferred to the cathode compartment through an external electric circuit, while protons are transferred to the cathode compartment through the membrane. When we put resistance between them, we can produce electricity.
Explanation given in a video below would help you to understand this concept better.



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Solar powered Steam engine

Steam engine brought industrial revolution in 19th century. Moreover, we can say that they were the engine of growth. At present time too, they are widely used in nuclear and coal power plants.

We discussed steam engine briefly in our post steam engine powered bicycle. Today we will discuss how we can produce steam using solar power?

Why do we need to use solar power?

Traditional steam engines mainly use coal and nuclear fuel to power themselves. Each of these methods has their repercussion. Coal powered engine damage our environment and after Japan Tsunami we know that use of nuclear fuel can be dangerous. Moreover, there are other strong reasons too, one of the most important is that sun light is free and abundant while coal and uranium are not.

How this project works?

To understand it, first you should know about how steam engine works?

Steam engines produce steam by boiling water and later use that steam for pushing piston in to and fro motion.My idea is, if we can use energy from the sun, to boil our water and left remaining steam engine intact, it would work exactly like our traditional engine except that our engine is powered by green energy.

To boil water using solar energy, we need a large magnify glass focused on our Solar Evacuated tube.
Evacuated tubes absorb solar energy and convert it into heat for use in water heating.  There are several types of evacuated tubes used in solar thermal collectors.This type of tube is chosen for its reliability, performance and cost effectiveness. We connect this tube with our engine using pipe and pass steam through it.


When lens of a system receives sun light, it direct it to the focal point which is our evacuated tubes.This process starts to heat these tubes.When we pass water through them,it converts into steam which we later use to power our engine.

Required Material:

Fresnel Lens
Solar Evacuated tube: Evacuated tubes absorb solar energy and convert it into heat for use in water boiling.

Useful Links:

Engine Plans

How to build one?

Toy Steam engine video:

Does it really works?



Related PDF :

Power generation using steam turbine

Highway Wind Turbines

We all know that how important wind power is.The only disadvantage with wind power is that it needs continuous flow of wind to generate electricity. Moreover, this is the reason that most of wind mills area is limited to large farmlands, sea and hills.

Project idea we are discussing today can solve this limitation problem. The only place in the world , where winds keeps on flowing irrespective of season whether day or night is Highways . What if we install our wind turbine at Dividers?


Advantages:

• Installation on divider not only reduce our land cost but also significantly optimize our power generation capability.
• We can use energy from vehicles from both sides of divider.
• Can generate electricity from natural wind also.

Concept:

When any vehicle move forward , it produce strong wind force at its sides. In this project, we would use that force to rotate our turbine. And, this turbine would be designed in such a way that it can use force of both the sides of divider as shown in the video.





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Power generation using railway track

The key element of  this project  is a variable capacitor, which can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy with the help of work done by an external force against the electric field formed between the two plates of the capacitor.
Concept :

We can generate electricity by pushing one plate of capacitor against another plate( which is also connected with small power source).Generated electricity is way more than electricity we supplied with the help of power source.

To produce good amount of electricity significantly we need to stimulate the variable capacitor using power from external source and discharging it at a later time in a cyclic manner to change the capacitance. 

How this system works with rails?

As explained before, by varying the distance between the capacitance portions in response to a vehicle on the rail, the capacitance plate moves against the energy field to act as a variable capacitor that make the co-generation of power with respect to the system.

Things we need :

1. Variable Capacitor
2. Power Source
3.Biasing Device : to keep two portions of capacitor separate.

Another Way ?

There is one  other way of generating electricity using trains is to use T Box wind power generator, which use the wind produce by trains to produce power.

Related Video : T Box Wind Power Generator

 

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Generating electricity using roads

There are millions of cars on streets around the world at any given time of day. Whenever, we talk about cars;  we start to think about negatives such as pollution , congestion etc etc. Despite all these cons , cars are essential part of our life and project would discuss today use these cars for generating electricity.

How?
We would use Piezoelectric material below the roads.When cars roll over it, due to pressure exerted by the cars, it starts generating electric current.

Recently , we have discussed most of the project related to Piezoelectric  Some of you might think that why , we are giving such a emphasis on this form of electricity?

When we talk about future of energy , Piezoelectric Electricity is going to play very important role. We are too much dependent on traditional sources ,and  to reduce there dependency we have to generate electricity from as much sources as we can such as solar, wind and piezoelectric materials. 

What's the advantage?

Electricity generated from roads can be used to light up street lights nearby which otherwise needs electricity from very distant sources.Moreover, significant amount of electricity has been lost while travelling big distances.

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Energy Harvesting from Sidewalk 

Energy Harvesting from a Piezoelectric Sidewalk

Millions of people use sidewalk daily which is a path along the side of a road. A sidewalk may accommodate moderate changes in grade (height) and is normally separated from the vehicular section by a curb.


This project idea is about harvesting pedestrian mechanical energy and converting it into electrical energy.We have already discussed Piezoelectric sidewalk in our post Power generation using foot steps.


Concept :

This project is based on very simple concept which states that when certain solid materials put under a mechanical stress they produce electricity. These materials are known as Piezoelectric materials.Some examples of these materials are Sucrose (table sugar), Quartz and  Topaz


 Related PDF :
Yale University



Human Power Harvesting

MIT Links 
 
Parasitic Power Harvesting in Shoes
Piezoelectric Energy Scavenging In Shoes

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Thermo Acoustic Refrigerator

Thermoacoustics is the study of the interactions between thermodynamic and acoustic phenomena. Thermoacoustics is a relatively new field of science and engineering. Few devices based on this principle have been made thus far. Most are for research purposes.

Thermoacoustic refrigerators have no ozone-depleting or toxic coolant and few or no moving parts therefore require no dynamic sealing or lubrication.


Concept :





The above formula states that there is a relation between pressure changes, and temperature changes. A dynamic pressure would cause a dynamic temperature and vice versa


Interference between the incoming and reflected wave is now imperfect since there is a difference in amplitude causing the standing wave to travel little, giving the wave acoustic power. In the acoustic wave, parcels of gas adiabatically compress and expand. Pressure and temperature change simultaneously,when pressure reaches a maximum or minimum, so does the temperature. Heat pumping along a stack in a standing wave device can now be described using the Brayton cycle.

Thermoacoustic engines (sometimes called "TA engines") are thermoacoustic devices which use high-amplitude sound waves to pump heat from one place to another, or conversely use a heat difference to induce high-amplitude sound waves.

Thermoacoustics is a relatively new field of science and engineering.


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