Hybrid energy harvesting system based on Stirling engine towards next-generation heat recovery system in industrial fields

Abstract

Tremendous energy is being wasted without any proper utilization despite the energy crisis and global warming. Especially, enormous thermal energy is wasted, which is generated from the industrial fields. To handle this issue, technology is highly desired to harvest this wasted thermal energy. Herein, a hybridized energy harvesting system based on Stirling engine (HESS) is proposed in order to harvest the wasted thermal energy in industrial fields. The developed HESS is composed of a disk triboelectric nanogenerator (disk TENG) and electromagnetic generator (EMG) based on Stirling engine that converts thermal energy into mechanical energy. Hence, the HESS can harvest the electricity from the mechanical energy converted from the thermal energy owing to the Stirling engine and shows its great stability of the performance by generating electrical output for more than 2 h without any specific degradation. Each part of the single EMG and the disk TENG in the HESS respectively generates an output power of 0.384 μW at 60 Ω and 1.2 μW at 30 MΩ, and the HESS can generate 1.4 μW at 9 MΩ by integrating each generated power. Moreover, the fabricated HESS generates 14.51 times more electrical energy than generated electrical energy through the single EMG. Considering these results, the next-generation heat recovery system can be implemented with the HESS by converting the wasted thermal energy into electrical energy in the industrial fields.