Harvest of ocean energy by triboelectric generator technology

Abstract

Water wave energy widely distributed in the globe is one of the most promising renewable energy sources. However, it has not been effectively exploited by current energy harvesting technologies which primarily rely on electromagnetic generator (EMG). EMG's have various limitations, especially when operating in environment with irregular and/or low frequencies ( < 5 Hz) wave motions. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) exhibit obvious advantages over EMG in harvesting energy from low-frequency water wave motions. The networking of TENGs has been regarded as a potential method towards large-scale blue energy harvesting. In this review, recent progress of the TENG technology for blue energy harvesting is presented, including a comparison between TENG and EMG in physics and engineering design, and the fundamental mechanism of nanogenerator based on Maxwell's displacement currents is systematically introduced. The review of hydrodynamic TENG, liquid-solid contact electrification TENG, hybrid (dual-modes) TENG, fully enclosed TENG, and TENG network for blue energy harvesting is discussed. The TENG networks are expected to harvest large-scale blue energy from the ocean, which will be a feasible approach for realizing the blue energy dream. Moreover, the energy harvested by TENG from various sources, such as human motion and vibration, is not only new energy, but more importantly, energy using for the new era-the era of internet of things.At the request of the authors, this article is being retracted effective 15 May 2019.