It feels very cumbersome to charge the batteries of the smart phone so the Mechanical engineers from University of Winson-Madison have come with a unique solution. They are working on developing an energy harvesting and storage technology that can help one to charge the batteries of the smart phone as you walk. Indeed if it is possible then we are having quite unique and useful technology which will not just save our electricity but will also channelize the energy generated when we walk.
Mobile Charging While walking Project
Tom Krupenkin who is the Professor of Mechanical Engineer and Senior Scientist J Ashley Taylor while describing this latest technology told that this technology will store the human motion so that your handset can be charged.
Batteries have become one of the critical sources of the energy and it has emerged as the most important factor if one wants a movable device. Hitherto there was no alternative source of these batteries but now with this latest invention of Reverse Electrowetting, Scientists have found a way to directly convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. Though the idea of energy harvesting is not new but recently only efforts has been done towards converting environmental energy towards electrical energy.
How is it possible?
This can be done with the help of energy harvester which will be embedded in your footwear that will capture the energy which will be produced while you will be walking and hence will store it so that one can use it whenever they want to. It will not just help one to charge their phone, this technology will prove important for the soldiers who have to carry the heavy weights batteries to charge their electronic devices like radio, GPS etc.
Single shoes generate power worth 10 watts so with a pair of shoes we are getting energy of 20 watts. Every day we are wasting 20 watts of energy which can be useful for the devices like phones that have little power requirement. A typical smart phone requires less than 2 watts of energy. So by using just a little amount from this energy generated, one can power more than one device as in one can charge series of devices like smart phone, tablet, laptop, flash lights etc.
Krupenkin in his Journal mentioned that they are trying to develop such methods through which mechanical energy can be directly converted into the electrical energy. And for these kinds of applications like charging the phones, laptops etc. we need such technology that can do so.
Therefore to convert the mechanical energy directly into the electrical energy, these scientist have used the technology of “reverse electrowetting’.
What is “REVERSE ELECTRO-WETTING”?
According to this phenomenon a conductive liquid is used. Whenever this conductive liquid is interacted with the nano-film coated surface, mechanical energy is directly converted into the electrical energy. This nano-film coated surface is nothing but dielectric coated conductive substrate.
The engineers have started their own start up named Instep Nanopower and now they are looking towards the industry so that they can commercialize their finding.
