Abstract
A floating power generation device is designed and fabricated to overcome the power supply limitations of wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring. Once there is a temperature difference between the upper surface exposed to sunlight and the lower surface in the water, the device is capable of generating power while floating in the wetland environment. Fresnel lenses were applied to concentrate solar irradiation on a selective absorbing coat. Meanwhile two vertical axis rotors were used to cool the cold side of the thermoelectric power generator by catching the breeze. The effects of solar irradiation, temperature distribution, load resistance, wind speed, the maximum power and the electrical efficiency of the thermoelectric power generator were analyzed. When subjected to solar irradiation of 896.38 W/m2, the device generated a potential difference of 381.03 mV and a power output of 8.86 mW via thermoelectric generation. In addition, compared with the system without wind, the output power was increased by approximately 10.96% in our system. The low power wireless networks, used in wetland environments, could be operated by the thermoelectric power generated by the floating device. Besides, this system offers powering solution for self-power miniature devices that are applied in aqueous environment.
Highlights
Meeting future energy demands using renewable and green technologies is a significant global challenge [1,2,3]
Once there is a temperature difference between the upper surface exposed to sunlight and the lower surface in the water, the device is capable of generating power while floating in the wetland environment
The results showed that the temperature difference increased firstly and kept stable, with the increase of water and wind speed for cooling system
Summary
Meeting future energy demands using renewable and green technologies is a significant global challenge [1,2,3]. The replacement of fossil fuels with sustainable energy sources has attracted increasing interest in recent years. Thermoelectricity has been the core of green energy and sustainable energy application which mainly focus on energy sources, energy transmission and thermodynamic materials conversion. A mass of studies on thermoelectric generator (TEG) have been carried out because of its many advantages such as no noise, no extra waste and low cost and so on. While they mainly focuses on the photovoltaic-thermoelectric hybrid systems [7,8,9], wearable
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