Piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity: Power under pressureYou probably never heard of piezoelectricity but you have used it if you have an outdoor grill with a push-button igniter. The phenomenon gets its name from the Greek word piezo which means push. Push on a ceramic crystal and you get a spark of electricity which, in the case of your grill or the gas/electric refrigerator in your camper, ignites the propane. It’s a strange phenomenon which may someday become a source of electricity by harnessing the pressure exerted on highways or railway tracks.This phenomenon was first discovered and described by Pierre and Jacques Curie in 1880.
It was then just a laboratory curiosity, but it later found application in microphones, which employ electric energy created by the pressure of sound waves on crystals. EARLY SONARPiezo electricity was utilized in 1917 for submarine detection in World War I. That early form of sonar sent out a chirp or ping that bounced off submerged submarines. DURABILITY? Xplore Abstract - Modeling and computation of a solar-piezoelectric hybrid power plant for railway stations. In this paper, we propose a new model of environment friendly solar-piezoelectric hybrid power plant that solely uses renewable energy to generate electricity and is capable of being practically implemented in railway stations. This model plant utilizes both photovoltaic panels which convert sunlight directly into electricity and piezoelectric pads which convert the mechanical stress exerted on it by moving train into electricity.
In piezoelectric pads, lead zirconate titanate (PZT) is used. PZT can tolerate the extreme weight of the train and also accumulate fair amount of charge at the two opposite faces of the pad. The association of PV panels and piezoelectric pads increases the overall efficiency of the generation unit. We have taken Kamlapur Railway station, Bangladesh as a representative of a typical railway station. Patent US7812508 - Power harvesting from railway; apparatus, system and method - Google Patents. Funding for piezoelectricity project. New Technology Harvests Electricity From Railroad Train Track Vibrations. Train photo from Shutterstock Anyone who has stood next to a train pulling into a station can attest to the immense power it produces as it rattles along the rails. Scientists at Stony Brook University recently won a national award their mechanical motion rectifier (MMR)-based Railroad Energy Harvester – an invention that harvests electricity from the vibrations produced by railroad trains.
The invention has the potential to save millions in railroad energy costs while reducing carbon emissions. The U.S. has the longest network of railroad tracks in the world – it spans 140,700 miles in total. Many of these railways lie in remote areas where it is at times difficult to supply power to signal lights, cross gates, and railroad switches. The MMR-based Railroad Energy Harvester could capture the irregular oscillatory vibrations of railroad tracks and turn them into normal unidirectional motion, which can be harvested as electricity. . + Stony Brook University Via ScienceDaily. Piezoelectric systems for green environment. Researchers at the City College of New York are planning small-scale piezoelectric devicesthat can be mounted on the roof or tail or a car or on an airplane fuselage and convert the vibrations into usable electricity. Measuring about half-inch by one inch, the devices won’t be able to replace the power output of conventional engines, but can provide renewable energy to power some systems such as control panels or portable electronic devices onboard.
Recently Toulouse, France became the first city to stick these piezoelectric pressure-sensitive modules on the sidewalks so that residents can generate power by simply walking down the street. The technology being used comes from a Dutch company Sustainable Dance Club and features embedded micro-sensors that generate electricity whenever pressure is applied on them, which can then be used to power streetlights. • P-Eco Concept Car: • Bright Walk Running Shoes: • Powering iPods with heartbeat: • Zeri Phone: • Portable Power Generator: Energy harvesting and storage technologies in rail transit. When one thinks of the most prominent applications of energy harvesting and storage in the transportation sector, waste heat recovery for cars in order to optimize fuel efficiency and batteries for electric vehicles instantly spring to mind. But cars are not the only vehicles that can benefit greatly from innovation in harvesting and storage. In this article we will briefly look at implementations in the rail transit sector, and the kind of technologies that are making their way onto trains, railways and waysides in order to reduce power consumption, maintenance costs and reliability of train services.
Harvesting vibration is probably the most obvious source of energy in a railway environment. Stony Brook University's work in this space was recognized with an IDTechEx "Best Application of Energy Harvesting" award in 2012. The applications described above consume power up to a few tens of mW. The Bombardier EnerGstor, incorporating supercapacitor arrays by Maxwell Technologies . Piezoelectric systems for green environment.