圧電素子による沸騰現象からのエナジーハーベスティングに関する実験研究

概要

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Energy harvesting is a process of extracting small amount of energy from ambient environment. Currently, electricity of μW range is enough to drive small electronic devices such as wireless sensors and networking devices. This study reports experimental result of a unique boiling energy harvester (BEH) which gains power from kinetic energy of boiling bubbles by means of piezoelectric devices. To verify working principle and characteristic, fundamental experiment has been conducted by a visible BEH with two types of piezoelectric materials (PVDF and PZT). As a result, BEH successfully generated electricity from boiling phenomenon and maximum power of 9.2μW was obtained when using PZT. Vibration characteristic was analyzed to determine optimal electric load to BEH. In addition, effect of boiling heat transfer area and cavity height on the performance was also examined toward further improvement. Finally, it was shown that BEH coupled with energy harvesting circuit demonstrated practical power generation.