Intelligent Device for Harvesting the Vibration Energy of the Automobile Exhaust with a Piezoelectric Generator
Jie Huang, Cheng Xu, Nan Ma, Qinghui Zhou, Zhaohua Ji, Chunxia Jia, Shan Xiao, Peng Wang
Abstract
With increasing consumption of energy and increasing environmental pollution, research on capturing the vibration energy lost during transportation and vehicle driving is growing rapidly. There is a large amount of vibration energy in the automobile exhaust system that can be recycled. This paper proposes a self-powered intelligent device (SPID) using a piezoelectric energy generator. The SPID includes a piezoelectric generator and sensor unit, and the generator is installed at the end of the automobile exhaust system. The generator adopts a parallel structure of four piezoelectric power generation units, and the sensing unit comprises light-emitting diode warning lights or low-power sensors. A simulated excitation experiment verifies the working state and peak power of the piezoelectric generator unit, which can achieve 23.4 μW peak power. The self-power supply and signal monitoring functions of the intelligent device are verified in experiments conducted for driving light-emitting diode lights and low-power sensors. The device is expected to play a crucial role in the field of intelligent driving and automobile intelligence.