Title: Water Droplet Impact Energy Harvesting with Lead-free Piezoelectric Structures
Abstract:
Harvesting energy from ambient sources using piezoelectric transducers is a topic which has seen a tremendous amount of interest from the scientific community, with research into lead-free piezoelectric materials seeing increased activity in recent times. The practicality of energy scavenging technology looks set to see continued relevance with decreasing power demands of electrical systems, such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), allowing such technology to progressively act as an energy source to drive and sustain them independently. Furthermore, energy harvesting technology is likely to play both an exciting and critical role in the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept. This is particularly true in the case of remote/hard to access applications which require a power source – energy harvesting technologies such as piezoelectric materials offer a an opportunity to prolong, or even replace, battery powered applications, providing a solution which lowers servicing requirements.
In this research, the opportunities for utilising piezoelectric transducers for converting the kinetic impact energy of falling water droplets into useful electrical energy is investigated. It has been demonstrated that falling water droplets can impart forces of over a thousand times their resting weight upon impact with solid objects. Tropical countries such as Colombia, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia experience heavy rainfall throughout the year, with total annual rainfall amounts in the region of 3,000 mm. Such deluges of large droplets impart notable impact forces upon natural and man-made structures, representing an interesting opportunity for further investigation into potential uses of this energy, such as smart city sensor technologies.