element14 energy harvesting road test design challenge: month one
Here we examine some of the highlights from the first month of the Challenge, and reveal the early difficulties the competitors have faced so far.
The first month has provided something of a reality check for our talented engineers as they face up to the realities of developing their project ideas in an uncompromising environment. The creative approaches have been inspiring, and it’s this sort of ingenuity that engineers must harness to find the workable new sources of energy necessary for the long term continuation of our demanding lifestyles.
Australian MA engineering student Sean Reynolds Massey-Reed has been getting to grips with his homebrew monitoring kit, and the good news for all beer aficionados is that he’s already successfully produced some impressive-looking Christmas ale, with pumpkin ale in the works at the time of writing.
Sean isn’t just looking to make good ale however, and needs to develop a method of harvesting excess heat from fermentation to power the monitor. Early trials were successful in getting the homebrew kit to reach a temperature over 30 degrees, but still fell short of the 62 degrees needed to power it.
As the kit can definitely create power, Sean is now looking to attach sensors, monitoring how much power they use with the energy aware profiler in order to gauge how much potential there is to operate the kit from its excess heat, and has also proposed utilising a thermal camera to get a clearer picture of the wasted heat generated from the kit.
Sean begins to run tests with his home brewing kit.
Wojciech Gelmunda has taken his carbon monoxide monitor into the initial trial stages. Inspired by the marketing messages of cavity insulation businesses, Wojciech is attempting to take advantage of the reputed temperature difference of just 1 degrees Celsius that exists between ambient room temperature and an insulated wall.
However, as his initial tests suggested that this isn’t necessarily always the case, Wojciech has evolved his design to take advantage of the warm water sources in kitchens and bathrooms. The immediate issue with this strategy is that warm water isn’t constantly running from a tap, and so Wojciech has examined how much energy he can store during everyday activities such as showering and washing dishes. His latest tests suggest this alternative approach could prove successful in using temperature differences.
Wojciech has run tests with water sources to use temperature differences for energy harvesting
Wojciech has stated that his initial experiences with energy harvesting have shown that there are no easy answers, with the use of creative thinking and unconventional approaches to problem solving required instead.
This is a feeling shared by Victor Sluiter as he looks to find an energy harvesting solution for his piezo and solar bicycle head light. Victor had looked to use vibration from the bicycle as the energy source to power the LED lamp, but found that the energy density of piezo actuators is too low to be useful on a bike.
Instead, Victor tried to explore the possibilities of using electromechanic parts to harvest energy. Realising that a loudspeaker is potentially suitable for this, Victor tried several ways of attaching conventional speakers to the energy harvesting kit using rectifiers and a mains transformer to transform up the voltage. Unfortunately, he was only able to generate a small amount of energy from tapping and hitting the speakers. Although he put enough mechanical energy in the speakers almost nothing came out electrically, with the coils too weakly coupled to the magnetic field, the frequencies generated were too low to let the speaker generate electricity efficiently.
After experimenting with various motors without success and considering using saddle motion as a way to generate energy, Victor conceded defeat with his bicycle lamp project and turned his attention towards developing energy harvesting from motion to harvesting from temperature difference. Specifically, Victor has explored the possibility of developing an egg timer gadget, harvesting energy from the heat of the water it’s submersed in to generate energy and calculate the time needed to cook an egg.
Victor theorised that the Peltier element from the Energy Harvesting Kit would harvest the energy from the temperature difference between water (rising to 100 degrees Celsius) while the insulating foam would start out at room temperature. Insulated in foam within the device, a sensor would be placed to test the water temperature and calculate the ‘hardness’ of the egg. Unfortunately, Victor then discovered that when heating up water, both sides of a Peltier element will quickly reach the same temperature, cancelling out the potential for energy harvesting.
Victor’s proposed egg-shaped Energy Harvesting Gadget, which would use a peltier element to generate energy from the difference between inner and outer temperature.
Unperturbed by the difficulties he has faced so far, in his own words, it’s now back to the drawing board to find inspiration for a way to use the difference in temperature between the inside and outside of a cooking pan. Victor remains determined to progress his ideas, find new solutions and report back with some positive news as the Challenge gathers pace.
No one said it would be easy. The competitors have however shown admiral determination and creativity in overcoming the hurdles their projects have already created, demonstrating that the talent and drive is there to push these promising but complicated designs through into mainstream usage.
The final winner of the Challenge will be the project that shows the most potential to be developed into a tangible product, but all of the projects, and the new approaches and innovations demonstrated by each competitor should prove to be significant and inspirational in how we approach this situation on a much larger scale, both now and in the near future.
The Design Challenge Participants are always open to ideas as to how they can better their projects. Join in the discussion and add your ideas and questions on the Energy Harvesting Solutions hub in the element14 community: https://www.element14.com/community/groups/energy-harvesting-solutions
Application engineers will be presenting the different technologies available for energy recovery and all the solutions and recommendations for implementation in a series of free Energy Harvesting seminars across Europe between late May and November with its partners. You can find out more, including where the team will be visiting, here: https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-54235/l/energy-harvesting-intelligence-and-efficiency–in-touch-workshop
About the author
Dianne Kibbey is Global Head of Community at element14 – www.element14.com
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
