Design of a multicylinder crank-slider wind energy harvester utlizing Faraday's law of electromagntic induciton

Abstract

Advancement in smart electronic devices such as smartphones, smart watches, tablets have impacted the requirement of supplying continuous energy for powering and functioning of these devices. There have been several research studies performed on harvesting energy from mechanical vibrations, wind, fluid flow, solar and geothermal etc. using various mechanisms. Piezoelectric mechanism provides high power density of energy conversion from mechanical vibrations or wind into electric voltage or charge, however, due to the lower power output of these devices, many devices must be summoned in order to generate actual usable power for small scale electronic devices. In this paper, we have designed, developed, and extensively tested a multicylinder wind energy harvester that converts rotational motion into linear motion which further converts it into electric voltage using Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction. The multicylinder design and modified crank allow the device to output higher power while operating at lower wind speeds such as 2.4 m/s. Furthermore, this device included a rectifier to convert from AC to DC, a capacitor to clean the output signal, and a 5 V regulator that can be used to charge a USB connected smartphone or other smart devices. Under a regulated low wind speed of 2.4 m/s and across a 305 Ω load, the device had a rotational frequency of 0.76 Hz and a power output of 1.2 mW whereas at the wind speed of 4.9 m/s the rotational frequency was 7.25 Hz and the output 421.9 mW. At a rotational frequency of 6 Hz the device was used to charge a 3.7 V 46 mAh smart watch at 1% charge in 1.4 min. We also used an optimized 305 Ω load in wind speeds reaching 10.1 m/s in real world conditions at which point the harvesters' output peaked at 1.21 W resulting in a power density of 19.98 W/m3. Authors believe that these results are promising for understanding, investigating, and providing continuous power solutions to small scale smart electronic devices.