Citation

Pang Y, Chen S, An J, Wang K, Deng Y, Benard A, Lajnef N, Cao C. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202003598

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Forest fires present a great threat as they can rapidly grow and become large, resulting in tragic loss of life and property when occurring near occupied land. Here a self-powered fire alarm system based on a novel multilayered cylindrical triboelectric nanogenerator (MC-TENG) that can produce electrical power for the detection sensors by harvesting the kinetic energy of moving tree branches in a forest is presented. The major parameters for harvesting the kinetic energy using the proposed MC-TENG are investigated, including the number of triboelectric layers, the frequency, the amplitude of external excitation, and the orientation between motion direction and device configuration. The fabricated MC-TENG results in a peak power of 2.9 mW and a maximum average power of 1.2 mW at a low frequency of 1.25 Hz. The integrated self-powered forest fire alarm system, consisting of fire sensors, a carbon-based micro-supercapacitor, and the MC-TENG, is demonstrated to be able to report fire risk or hazard efficiently, accurately, and robustly. This study provides a new solution to reduce the forest fire risk through a portable and sustainable alarm system by effectively harvesting kinetic energies in natural environment with TENG technology.

Language: en

Keywords

energy harvesting; forest fire alarm systems; multilayered cylindrical structures; triboelectric nanogenerators; vibration kinetic energy