Design of energy harvesting thermoelectric generator with wireless sensors in organic fertilizer plant

Abstract

Every manufacturing process leaves waste to environment. Some waste must be controlled. Some waste can be utilized. Like the organic fertilizer plant, it leaves waste from chicken manure digestion of bacteria. The air pollution has ammonia gas and heat. The gas has to be deodorized by deodorizer tank. On the other hand, the heat can be harvested for electrical energy. The plant needs to monitor ammonia gas level in the waste out air. We propose a design the energy harvest appliance to produce electrical power from a temperature difference which is caused by heat energy on surface of the deodorizer tank. The electricity powers wireless sensors which check quality of the waste air. The thermoelectric generator (TEG) is used to convert the heat energy to be electrical power. It converts temperature gradient between its hot side and cool side to be electrical power based on the Seebeck effect. For long life time, the two energy storage concept (a super capacitor primary storage and a battery secondary storage) is used and the power management is proposed. The system can work and stand alone. The experimental results show that the system can generate continual power up to 290mW.

Energy-Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs)

“…The hardware prototype demonstrates a solar cell, a miniature TEG, and a combined power management circuit, and it was shown to harvest an average electrical power of 621μW. A hybrid solar/thermal harvesting system for indoor ammonia gas concentration measurements in an organic fertilizer plant was proposed in Chottirapong et al (2015). The TEG utilizes the heat difference between the hot side and the cold side of a deodorizer tank.…”

“…Human activities affect the quality of air, since high volumes of smoke are emitted from factories and cars, which increases the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) leading to the increasing effects of global warming (WHO 2014). The utilization of EH-WSNs in air quality monitoring (AQM) aids in the detection of air pollutants such as particulate matter (PM), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), ozone (O 3 ), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), and sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) (Morelli et al 2016;Sardini and Serpelloni 2011;Touati et al 2015;Chottirapong et al 2015;. EH-WSNs for air quality monitoring can be installed indoors or outdoors, with the main difference being in the amount of energy harvested from the environment.…”

“…For outdoor AQM systems, solar cells is an obvious energy-harvesting technique but must be accompanied by energy storage, management and prediction to provide high efficiency and overcome the obstacles in harvesting solar energy, such as varying weather conditions. A thermal solar hybrid energy-harvesting implementation for air quality monitoring is provided in Chottirapong et al (2015). The authors looked at the possibility of harvesting energy from organic fertilizer plant waste to monitor air pollution in terms of ammonia gas concentration.…”

Investigation of temperature gradient between ambient air and soil to power up wireless sensor network device using a thermoelectric generator

“…The output obtained from a temperature difference of 20 ℃ is 298 mV. In comparison, studies using TEG by K. Chottirapong et al to obtain a long lifespan using two concepts of energy storage [30]. There is primary storage of super capacitors, and secondary storage of batteries used for power management is proposed.…”

Experimental Investigation of Thermoelectric Self-Cooling System for the Cooling of Ultrasonic Transducer Drivers

“…In their study, Janak and Singule examined the different application possibilities of energy harvesting methods for aerospace [10]. Similarly, Chottirapong et al proposed a combined thermoelectric and photovoltaic energy collection system for an organic fertilizer plant with a power output of 290 mW [11]. Leonov examined the thermoelectric energy collection system that produces 0.5 to 5 mW of power from body temperature through wearable sensors [12].…”