Toward effective irregular wind energy harvesting: Self-adaptive mechanical design strategy of triboelectric-electromagnetic hybrid wind energy harvester for wireless environmental monitoring and green hydrogen production

Abstract

Wind energy, which has been attracting attention as a sustainable clean energy for carbon neutrality, needs to be efficiently harvested in consideration of the intrinsic mechanical characteristics of wind in the natural environment. In this study, we suggest the self-adaptive triboelectric-electromagnetic hybrid wind energy harvester (SA-TEH), which can effectively harvest the wind energy by adopting the movable magnet based rational mechanical analysis-based design strategy. The SA-TEH can be effectively operated regardless of wind speed by automatically modulating its energy acceptability that mechanically limits the total amount of mechanical energy acceptable to a given mechanical system. The outstanding effectiveness of the adaptive mechanical design is verified in that the energy conversion efficiency of the SA-TEH is maximized up to approximately 60 times higher than the fixed mechanical designed energy harvester in the specific wind environment. Furthermore, the present SA-TEH enables to successfully operate of both the real-time wireless environmental monitoring system and the wireless hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles without an external power supply. Therefore, the proposed rational adaptive mechanical design-based output enhancement strategy not only provides the design guideline for small-sized energy harvesters but exhibits the crucial role of classical mechanics in the state-of-the-art technology to bring unexpectedly tremendous ripple effects.