Harvesting Discarded Vibrational Energy for Reuse

Dr. Song Hyun-cheol's research team at KIST has developed an energy harvester that produces energy by self-tuning resonance to vibrations in the surrounding environment.

[Asia Economy Reporter Junho Hwang] A technology has been developed that harvests various vibrations generated from automobiles, trains, and industrial sites as energy and converts it into electrical energy. In particular, it is expected to be used as a new independent power source for wireless Internet of Things (IoT) and wearables by absorbing various vibration frequencies and vibration energy.

On the 1st, Dr. Hyuncheol Song's research team at the Electronic Materials Research Group of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology announced that they developed an automatic resonance-tuning energy harvester that adjusts its natural frequency by itself according to the installation environment to match resonance. The research results were recently published in the international journal Nano Energy.

Technology that harvests energy by matching any vibration

The research team developed an energy harvester that induces resonance by adjusting its natural frequency by itself to match the surrounding vibration frequency without any separate electrical device. Inside this device, an autonomously moving additional component is installed, which senses the surrounding vibrations and moves its position by itself to have the same vibration frequency as the surroundings, thereby inducing resonance. The research team stated that it can increase the frequency band by more than 1400% compared to existing energy harvesters with a single natural frequency.

An energy harvester is a device that collects wasted energy around us, such as vibrations or heat, and converts it into usable electrical energy. Previously developed devices had fixed natural frequencies, resulting in low power generation efficiency or requiring additional equipment such as motors to match the natural frequency, failing to secure sufficient power generation efficiency for commercialization.

Can be used as an independent power source for IoT, wearables, and more

Dr. Hyuncheol Song said, "It is significant that we implemented a technology that can match its natural frequency by itself without additional energy consumption while having a simple structure," adding, "It is expected to greatly accelerate the timing of applying energy harvesters to our daily lives."

He continued, "In the future, self-tuning energy harvesters are expected to play a key role as autonomous independent power sources for wireless sensor networks, wearables, and especially the Internet of Things, which is one of the core technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.