Development of ambient-Kinetic Energy Harvester for Clean Energy Generation

Abstract

For the past several years, considerable effort is focused on the use of renewable energy coming from natural resources. This research has demonstrated experimentally and computationally an alternative source of clean energy derived from small scale energy harvester which taking advantage of the piezoelectric effect. The developed energy harvester is capable of capturing and converting ambient fluid flow. Firstly, piezoelectric polymer films of poly(vinylidene fluoride) or PVDF was used in a prototype and utilized kinetic energy of fluid flow to induce the vibrations. The so- called vortices induced vibration (VIV) was theoretically developed agreed well with experimental results. The voltage outputs from the prototype were obtained for 1.3 mV at 0.23 Hz and 4.2 mV at 1.02 Hz. Secondly, Self-Adjustable Small Scale Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (SABSS-HAWT) has been proposed in this work. It is able to capture a wind flow by adjustable attacking angle (B) of the blades related to changed wind speed. The efficiency conversion (n) classified by mechanical (mech) and electrical conversion (nelec) had been maximized at ẞ of 45°. The most advantage and a benefit of self-adjustable blades in this work is its capability to capture and convert the wind flow at a speed with U as low as 0.5 m/s. Finally, Implementations of fluid flow energy harvesting as the generator supplied to batteries for WSN application are possible although the harvested power was low due to the loss during the energy conversion processes. Webpage monitoring and mobile phone application monitoring were successfully demonstrated