Slashdot Mirror
Engineers Devise a Way To Harvest Wind Energy From Trees (vice.com)
derekmead writes: Harvesting electrical power from vibrations or other mechanical stress is pretty easy. Turns out all it really takes is a bit of crystal or ceramic material and a couple of wires and, there you go, piezoelectricity. As stress is applied to the material, charge accumulates, which can then be shuttled away to do useful work. The classic example is an electric lighter, in which a spring-loaded hammer smacks a crystal, producing a spark. Another example is described in a new paper in the Journal of Sound and Vibration, courtesy of engineers at Ohio State's Laboratory of Sound and Vibration Research. The basic idea behind the energy harvesting platform: exploit the natural internal resonances of trees within tiny artificial forests capable of generating enough voltage to power sensors and structural monitoring systems.
Slap a solar cell on the tree. (Tree has access to sunlight)
Firewood burns pretty well, too.
oh, the horror.
Engineers Devise a Way To Harvest Wind Energy From Trees
Wow. I know Slashdot tends to lag behind the other news sites, but this is ridiculous.
If they can harvest enough energy to power a Speak-and-Spell hacked into a satellite up-link, they might have something.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The last paragraph pretty much sums it up.
"It's mostly a proof of concept or rather a disproof of the assumption that wind vibrations can't be usefully harvested. Don't expect tiny metal forests to power cities, but it's still a cool idea."
So this appears not to have any practical applications.
If you can read that techno-babble, you either wrote for The Big Bang Theory or you were a technical advisor.
*** Don't be dull.***
I've always wondered why nobody did this with the 'soundwalls' that parallel every urban highway today - all you'd be taking is sound energy, so essentially it would even perhaps improve their sound-deadening qualities, while powering a nearby street light or two.
-Styopa
Will the tiny forests have tiny herds of deer romping through them.
https://www.google.com/search?...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The power yielded from this is tiny. You'd spend more energy installing the system than it would ever return. The cost to install is more than the value of power generated. Hell, where do you think piezoelectric materials come from? They need to be mined out of the earth. This brainless scheme would have us spend tons of energy to mine and manufacture worthless micro-generators to stick on trees. Idiocy.
Some dumb engineer from the University of Calgary had this idea last summer. Hooked up a bunch of these to sound stages at a local festival. Total energy yield, less than 10 cents worth of electricity. Said engineer was mentioned in multiple news articles and boasted of expecting to put the system on city roads and bridges. Total math failure.
exploit the natural internal resonances of trees within tiny artificial forests capable of generating enough voltage to power sensors and structural monitoring systems.
so they invented self-powered Life Alert system for trees? ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
someone knows about dyi plan for a light switcher that use only piezo as power source ?
We conduct conference in different states and cities all over India. The main aim of the conference is to spread the knowledge among the Engineering students, Researchers and any other who attends the conference. for further information please contact Conference Alerts.
Any time someone proposes an artificial tree as a solution, you know they are an asshole. Put a real tree there. It will use solar power to turn atmospheric CO2 into solid fuel. It really doesn't get any better than that. You would get more power from one tree-sized solar plant than from a whole forest of artificial trees that don't make air, don't clean air, and don't self-repair.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What they really need to do is a bit of genetic engineering - get the cell growth of the trunk to embed nano-wires... that connect to the leaves to harvest some left over energy from photosynthesis (it is present, as there is a LOT of left over energy - besides keeping the tree alive, it also provides food for animals, resources for fungi, bacteria, ...)
Duh
Is wind energy possible to store in batteries from running trains and vehicles.?
I guess they watched ET.
Wont it work..? Get energized while energy drains... Fit a small wind farm above the running cars and train. And store in batteries... If artificial trees can, why cant this..?
Growing trees may capture more carbon. So once a tree is mature it is less useful with respect to carbon capture.
Plus there are secondary benefits of burning wood displacing other fuels such as coal. Burning fresh wood is carbon neutral unlike burning carbon sequestered millions of years ago in the coal or petroleum case.
It is hard to find an application of this that would not be more easily solved with solar. Perhaps if you really wanted to hide your sensor as this could be completely inside the tree.
Its not a replacement for solar it is a complement. We need trees, we should probably have more trees. Their trunks and branches are going to bend and flex whether we take advantage of that or not. Much like the tides are going to come and go. Having piezo devices running along (outside) tree trunks and branches is an interesting idea. Way too early to say how practical it is, but its yet another thing to look into. Science and engineering is at times all about looking at "crazy" ideas.
Skyscrapers? Bridges?
Nobody said anything about powering a city with it, but even if it really was only 0.04W/sqm, over a year it's a nice amount of energy. Enough to power emergency beacons or call boxes or something.
It may be a small amount but what is the alternative, letting it go to waste?
Piezo devices can be run along trunks and branches of real trees. This tech does not require artificial trees.
In the movie, the alien used connections to a tree to power his transmitter to phone home. It's nice to see some confirmation that the idea isn't entirely fantasy.