Autonomous Energy Harvester Based on Textile-Based Enzymatic Biofuel Cell for On-Demand Usage

Abstract

This paper presents an autonomous energy harvester based on a textile-based enzymatic biofuel cell, enabling an efficient power management and on-demand usage. The proposed biofuel cell works by an enzymatic reaction with glucose in sweat absorbed by the specially designed textile for sustainable and efficient energy harvesting. The output power of the textile-based biofuel cell has been optimized by changing electrode size and stacking electrodes and corresponding fluidic channels suitable for following power management circuit. The output power level of single electrode is estimated less than 0.5 μW and thus a two-staged power management circuit using intermediate supercapacitor has been presented. As a solution to produce a higher power level, multiple stacks of biofuel cell electrodes have been proposed and thus the textile-based biofuel cell employing serially connected 5 stacks produces a maximal power of 13 μW with an output voltage of 0.88 V when load resistance is 40 kΩ. A buck-boost converter employing a crystal oscillator directly triggered by DC output voltage of the biofuel cell makes it possible to obtain output voltage of the DC–DC converter is 6.75 V. The efficiency of the DC–DC converter is estimated as approximately 50% when the output power of the biofuel cell is tens microwatts. In addition, LT-spice modeling and simulation has been presented to estimate power consumption of each element of the proposed DC–DC converter circuit and the predicted output voltage has good agreement with measurement result.

Application of DC-DC Converter in Sensor and MEMS Device Integration and Packaging

“…With the development of semiconductor technology, large-scale integrated circuits with high integration and powerful functions continue to appear, which makes electronic equipment continue to shrink and reduce its weight. How to reduce the switching power supply is an important direction of switching power supply research [9][10][11], which requires the study of DC-DC converter topology, new materials, highperformance electronic components, etc. [12].…”

Mini-Review: Recent Technologies of Electrode and System in the Enzymatic Biofuel Cell (EBFC)

“…Making the EBFC system is essential for the application involved. For example, to detect blood glucose, the EBFC system developed should be easy to use and dispose of [77]. Most EBFC systems exhibit decreased power and limited lifetime because solvent evaporation in the hydrostatic electrolyte and biofuel depletion require paper exchange replacement and electrolyte refilling [77].…”

“…For example, to detect blood glucose, the EBFC system developed should be easy to use and dispose of [77]. Most EBFC systems exhibit decreased power and limited lifetime because solvent evaporation in the hydrostatic electrolyte and biofuel depletion require paper exchange replacement and electrolyte refilling [77]. To reduce external components such as pumps, Duong et al [17] have produced self-pumping EBFCs, as shown in Figure 7.…”

“…In this study, the 4-series arrangement produced a stable open-circuit voltage of 1.65 V with a power density of 46.4 µW/cm 2 at 0.8 V. The feedforward control of the DC-DC PWM (pulse width modulation) boost converter was used in the power management circuit for stacking EBFC so that the power generated had a high power conversion efficiency. Seok et al [77] studied the effect of EBFC power when changing the number and size of cells to optimize the DC output voltage. The efficiency of the DC-DC converter of 50% produced a capacity of 13 µW with an output voltage of 0.88 V on five stacks of EBFC.…”