Energy from greenhouse plastic films

Abstract

Greenhouses are occupying worldwide vast cultivated land for plantation. The polymer film covered on most greenhouses is exactly a ready-made triboelectrification layer for Triboelectric Nanogenerator (TENG). However, so far, such a huge area of polymer film is still underutilized. Generally, the larger area of the triboelectric film, the better performance of TENG output. Therefore, a new concept of Greenhouse Energy is proposed, which refers to various effective energy directly or indirectly generated by means of greenhouse film. As a typical example of Greenhouse Energy, a model greenhouse based on TENG with transparent electrodes and triboelectric layers is demonstrated. The technologies of charge pumping and switch circuit are adopted to improve the output performance. As a demonstration, the commercial temperature and humidity sensors could be powered for about 20 s after capacitors charged for 500 s. The output power density reaches 3.06 mW/m2. As a reasonable deduction, if a real greenhouse with tens of square meter is constructed in the same way, it will become a promising distributed power source for powering devices such as sensors, controllers, lights, irrigation system in intelligent agriculture. This work aims to pave the way for the application of TENG in the field of agriculture and to provide a new possibility for intelligent greenhouses. Starting from agricultural field, Greenhouse Energy will collaborate with Blue Energy further complementing the new distributed energy system.