ABSTRACT
This seminar is all about generating electricity when people walk on the Floor. Think about the forces you exert which is wasted when a person walks. The idea is to convert this force to electrical energy. The Power Generating floor intends to translate the kinetic energy to the electrical power. Energy Crisis is the main issue of world these days.
The motto of this research work is to face this crisis somehow. Though it won’t meet the requirement of electricity but as a matter of fact if we are able to design a power generating floor that can produce 100W on just 12 steps, then for 120 steps we can produce 1000 Watt and if we install such type of 100 floors with this system then it can produce 1MegaWatt. Which itself is an achievement to make it significant
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Energy is very important in today's world. For example, we use different energy sources to generate the electricity we need for our homes, schools, businesses and factories. Electricity powers our TVs, computers, air conditioners, cell phones and washing machines - just to mention a few. We also use energy to run cars, planes, trains, buses and motorcycles.Energy harvesting also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging is the process by which energy is derived from external sources e.g. solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients ,and kinetic energy, captured, and stored for small, wireless autonomous devices, like those used in wearable electronics and wireless sensor networks. Energy harvesters provide a very small amount of power for low energy electronics. While the input fuel to some largescale generation costs money (oil, coal, etc.), the energy source for energy harvesters is present as ambient background and is free. For example, temperature gradients exist from the operation of a combustion engine and in urban areas, there is a large amount of electromagnetic energy in the environment because of radio and television broadcasting.
Walking is the most common activity in day to day life. When a person walks, he loses energy to the road surface in the form of impact, vibration, sound etc, due to the transfer of his weight on to the road surface, through foot falls on the ground during every step. This energy can be tapped and converted in the usable form such as in electrical form With that in mind investments are being made in the popular green energy sectors such as wind, solar, and wave energy. However, people’s steps (thousands upon thousands a day) utilize and channel kinetic energy too.
1.1 Objective
The objective of this study is to find the feasibility of power generation from footsteps.
CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 General
With the electronic devices becoming integral part of day-to-day life, both in personal and industrial environments, the demand for energy is tremendously increasing across the globe. In the effort to find alternative sources to supplement the conventional energy sources, the energy industry has found the feasibility in fossil fuels, nuclear, thermal, hydro, solar etc. Human body generates a lot of energy while doing the most-common activity - walking. Every foot fall causes pressure when the foot hits the floor, which goes untapped. With the ground surface engineered to harvest the energy, power can be generated from the human footfalls, stored and used as a power source or even fed to the power grid. For instance, a person dancing on an energy harvesting floor can generate 5-10 watts; in a packed dance club, the production can meet up to 60% of the total energy required for the club.
There are few methods to generate electrical energy from footsteps. Power would be generated by footsteps of crowd on the floor.
2.2 Footfall energy harvesting floor
An emerging startup called Pavegen has installed such squares of energy-generating pavement in London. In an effort to keep the production of the pavement as green and sustainable as possible, Pavegen partnered with Ryburn Rubber Limited and Advanced LEDs (which has also invested in the idea) to make sure that its components create as small an environmental impact as possible.The average square of pavement produces about 2.1 watts of electricity. And according to Pavegen, any one square of pavement in a high-foot traffic area can see 50,000 steps a day. Based on this data, only five units of Pavegen pavement can be enough to keep the lights on at a bus stop all night .
And while the power producing platform is over crowded with moving population, energy is produced at larger levels. Pavegen isn’t targeting its product exclusively at municipalities. One of its big ideas is to have stores located on busy sidewalks install them in front of their locations to power their signage or any internal electronics. To encourage this adoption, the company says it will brand its slabs for its commercial customers. The slabs installed in East London happen to be green (thus suggesting its clean-tech solution) but they come in a variety of colors . The company believes the embedded lamp is important to inform passersby of their contribution to the clean energy movement.
An emerging technology in the industry is the footfall energy harvesting floor, which generates energy from the routine human activities, such as walking, running, jumping, dancing etc. The technology works on the basic principle of converting kinetic energy, obtained from the pressure applied on the floor surface, into electrical energy. The “footfall energy harvesting floor” comprises a floor covering that encloses a transducer mechanism for converting the applied pressure into electrical energy and a means for transmitting the electrical energy for storage or load consumption. Among the other technologies that promote sustainable energy, energy harvesting floor is considered to be the most productive as it does not depend on any of the natural resources, such as wind, water or sun that are not consistently available. Energy harvesting floors, which take input from human footsteps without affecting pedestrians’ normal life, are easy to install, environment friendly, and are truly sustainable.
2.3 Experiments with energy harvesting floors
Researches and developers have experimented on footfall energy harvesting floors to study their feasibility, reliability and effectiveness. Constant experiments have been carried out in the East Japan railway stations, streets of Toulouse and West Ham underground station over a period of varying durations, ranging from several weeks to few years. These experiments have provided evidences that energy harvesting tiles are robust, practical and can be used as an alternative source of producing energy. Post the initial success, improvements are being made and tested for enhanced power generation performance and capacity, along with advancements in material durability. The energy thus captured can be used to power streetlights, pedestrian crossing lights, bus stop displays, traffic signals, automatic ticket gates in stations, information displays etc. Dance clubs around the globe have piloted the footfall energy harvesting floors belonging to the prototype concept - "Crowd Farm", in which energy from footfalls of clubbers dancing on the floors is collected and used to power LED lights and, in the long-term plan, fed into the club's power grid.
2.4 Different technology behind the energy floors
With this method energy harvesting proving its feasibility, developers of energy harvesting floors concentrating their efforts find the most-efficient way of harvesting energy from footfalls. To popularize and establish this technology among varied consumer segment, inventors have already initiated marketing of their products, which has been well received by environmental activists. Based on the mechanism used for converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy, footfall energy harvesting floors can be broadly classified into the following categories:
Source: Wikipedia
Fig.2.1. Different methods for power generation from footsteps
Table 2.1 Different methods for power generation from footsteps
2.4.1 Piezoelectric method for power generation
Though various kinds of footfall energy harvesting technologies exist, piezoelectric is the commonly-used technology. It generates energy from external force impulses or vibration in flooring, bridges, roads and structures. This system can produce energy even with consistent or predictable vibrational frequency. With its ability to leverage any kind of force, stress or strain, it is ideal for different applications, and hence has a widening market potential.
Though, power generated using piezoelectric systems are predominantly in cigar lighters, they have found applications in wireless sensors and various portable electronics.
However, the varying or inconsistent vibrational frequency range limits the practicality for certain applications.This device, if embedded in the footpath, can convert foot impact energy into electrical form. The working principle is simple. When a pedestrian steps on the topplate of the device, the plate will dip down slightly due to the weight of the pedestrian. The downward movement of the plate results in rotation of the shaft of an electrical alternator, fitted in the device, to produce electrical energy. The top plate reverts back to its original position due to negating springs provided in the device. If such devices are embedded in places where there is continuous human traffic such as in city malls, railway platforms, city footpaths etc., the electricity generated from these devices can be used for street lights.
The greatest attraction of this technique is that in order to generate electrical power using footsteps one step will be enough at this level to produced electrical energy. The piezo electric method can be approached as a fly and gear wheel mechanism. Following are the steps of fly and gear wheel method.
First step is by proper arrangement of electrical system. After the arrangement of electrical system which transforms mechanical energy to electrical energy, When a human steps on the device due to his/her body weight the iron plate moves downwards and drives the crank shaft which further drives the gear arrangements which further drives fly wheel. Then there is another gear arrangement which is connected to the commentator of the dynamometer. The load is applied in the iron plate, Power is produced. Then the voltage that produced through steps is rectified and after battery charger circuit this D.C voltage is stored in the lead acid battery of 12 volt. This lead acid battery is further attached to the inverter. The invert is designed such that it inverts the voltage from battery which is 12 volt D.C to 230 volt A.C. So this A.C voltage is used in different appliances such as for charging the laptop battery and also to charge the handset, it can also be used to lightening up through energy saver. In order to produce more power the number or footsteps can be increased and also the ability of battery and inverter should be increased, then output power will also be increased.
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
The piezoelectric effect is understood as the linear electro-mechanical interaction between the mechanical and the electrical state in crystalline materials with no inversion symmetry. The piezoelectric effect is a reversible process in that materials exhibiting the direct piezoelectric effect (the internal generation of electrical charge resulting from an applied mechanical force) also exhibit the reverse piezoelectric effect (the internal generation of a mechanical strain resulting from an applied electrical field).
Fig.3.1 Piezoelectric principle
Source: www.ijsrp.org
Fig.3.2. Working principle
Source: www.irjset.com
3.1 Methodology
The nature of the piezoelectric effect is closely related to the occurrence of electric dipole moments in solids. The latter may either be induced for ions on crystal lattice sites with asymmetric charge surroundings or may directly be carried by molecular groups. The dipole density or polarization (dimensionality [cm/m3]) may easily be calculated for crystals by summing up the dipole moments per volume of the crystallographic unit cell. As every dipole is a vector, the dipole density P is a vector field. Dipoles near each other tend to be aligned in regions called Weiss domains. The domains are usually randomly oriented, but can be aligned using the process of poling (not the same as magnetic poling), a process by which a strong electric field is applied across the material, usually at elevated temperatures.
One of the decisive importance for the piezoelectric effect is the change of polarization P when applying a mechanical stress. This might either be caused by a reconfiguration of the dipole-inducing surrounding or by re-orientation of molecular dipole moments under the influence of the external stress.
Fig.3.3. Mechanism of kinetic footfall
Source:www.un-spider.org
3.1.1 Mechanical Stress
Here the mechanical stress is considered as the weight of the footsteps per unit area. The weight of the footsteps due to gravity is converted into mechanical rotation. stress is a physical quantity that expresses the internal forces that neighboring particles of a continuous material exert on each other. For example, when a solid vertical bar is supporting a weight, each particle in the bar pulls on the particles immediately above and below it. When a liquid is under pressure, each particle gets pushed inwards byall the surrounding particles, and, in reaction, pushes them outwards. These macroscopic forces are actually the average of a very large number of intermolecular forces and collisions between the molecules in those particles. Stress inside a body may arise by various mechanisms, such as reaction to external forces applied to the bulk material (like gravity) or to its surface (like contact forces, external pressure, or friction). Any strain (deformation) of a solid material generates an internal elastic stress, analogous to the reaction force of a spring that tends to restore the material to its original undeformed state. In liquids and gases, only deformations that change the volume generate persistent elastic stress. However, if the deformation is gradually changing with time, even in fluids there will usually be some viscous stress, opposing that change. Elastic and viscous stresses are usually combined under the name mechanical stress.
CHAPTER 4
FEASIBILITY STUDY
4.1 Case study
Based on the journals Power Generation Footstep by Shiraz Afzal,etal, and Proposed Method of Foot Step Power Generation Using Piezo Electric Sensor by Mr. A. Adhithan,etal,the feasibility of adopting power generation from footsteps is discussed.
4.2 Study area
The feasibility test of kinetic footfall was conducted at Time Square in New York City. Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. With latitude and longitude coordinates: 40.758896, -73.985130.
4.3 Calculations and feasibility
The idea is to place pavegen tiles throughout Time square on the sidewalks. Since Time square gets roughly 350,000 pedestrians every day, it would make sense to put these on the sidewalks to generate a little electricity,.On average a pedestrian in New York City will walk approximately one mile a day or around 20 blocks. If we assume that each person who goes through Time Square walks one mile, the number of total steps taken is equal to around 650 million steps per day. This is calculated by multiplying the number of pedestrians, 350,000, by 5280 feet per mile and dividing that by 2.5ft per step. Pavegen tells us that each of their blocks will produce 7 watts per impulse of a step, which is 0.68 seconds when measured. This produces 4.76 Joules per step of energy. Multiplying this by the number of steps total for one day and then for one year, the amount of energy produced for one year is 1,105GJ. This is equal to about 307,000 kWh per year of electricity produced. If we assume that electricity costs $0.15 per kWh, the total savings of installing the tiles is $46,042 per year. Unfortunately, each tile costs well over $100 at the moment, and to cover all of Time Square's sidewalks with these tiles, needing around 236,000 of them, it would cost upwards of $23 million dollars. The number of tiles needed was calculated by knowing the area of each tile from Pavegen's website, and calculating the total area of sidewalk within Time's Square. This was done by assuming that each sidewalk is roughly 12 feet in width and then using Google Maps to determine how much sidewalk is in Time Square. The square footage of sidewalk estimated to be in Times Square is roughly 686,500 ft square.
In Time Square during the New Years Eve Celebration. The number of people that come to Time Square for the celebration is approximately one million. Plus, the area in which they are all moving around is much smaller than all of Times Square. Assuming that the area in which the one million people are is equal to a right triangle with lengths of 1500ft and 250ft, roughly half the area of 2 city blocks, and that each person again walks an estimated one mile total, the number of total steps taken for that night is 2.1 billion. The dimensions for the area of the celebration was gotten by using Google Maps and estimating the area as accurately as possible. With that many steps, the amount of power generated is equal to 14.8 million kW. Lets also assume that the celebration goes on from 7pm to 1am, or six hours, and therefore the number of kWh generated is equal to 2792 kWh.
4.3.1 Market Analysis
Energy harvesting (EH) has become a major area of focus in Europe and North America; Asian organizations too are investing in the various EH technologies. By 2020, the global energy harvesting market is expected to reach $4.4bn.
Majority of the sustainable energy technologies calls for a constant monitoring of, the surrounding environment of installation location. Further, the suitable type and specifications of the devices has to be decided based on the survey reports. Parameters such as size of the devices and place of installation also mandate the tedious, time and effort-consuming post-installation monitoring and maintenance tasks.
In contrast to other technologies for which locations are decided based on surveys conducted over a prolonged period, energy harvesting floors eliminate any pre-installation analyzing or monitoring to identify the ideal location. The sole criterion to be fulfilled for the installation is that the place should have human movement. Every city around the world has a huge, growing population, and public places like airports, railway stations and commercial complexes receive huge amount of footfalls throughout the day, thus making them suitable for energy harvesting floors
Energy harvesting tiles started off as prototypes in the beginning of the last decade; significant developments have given them a capability to produce up to 20 watts per hit and about 10 kilowatt-hours in a week. With the support from environmentalists, these tiles have become a runaway success around the world.
4.3.2 IP Perspective
The footfall energy harvesting floor technology came into existence in the mid of 20th century. However, it has received increased attention in the last few years, which is evident from a considerable increase in the number of patent filings in the piezoelectric sector. The traditional lead zirconatetitanate PZT ceramic is being replaced with organic alternatives such as polyvinylidenedifluoride. In addition to creating piezoelectric systems with enhanced efficiency and temperature performance, companies also lay emphasis on the flexibility of the materials.
Companies such as Toyota Boshoku Corp, Pavegen, Seratech, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Co Ltd are prominent players in energy harvesting floors. Below is a comparative split of patents/publications owned by the players:
Source:www.carbonbrief.org
Fig.4.1. Assignee analysis
Source:www.carbonbrief.org
Fig.4.2 Product analysis
UK-based Pavegen has installed tiles in more than 100 locations, including Harrods and Heathrow Airport. In 2015 the startup raised £2 million from over 1,500 investors on equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
4.3 Future Aspects
In future aspects we can use this principal in the speed breakers at high ways where are rushes of the vehicles too much thus increase input torque and ultimate output of generator. If this project is implemented at very busy stairs palace then we produce efficient useful electrical for large purpose.
4.4 Advantages
· To store the electricity in battery.
· It can be use at any time when it necessary.
· Easy construction.
· Less number of parts required.
· Electricity can used for many purposes
4.5 Applications
· In street light.
· In LED light for specific purposes.
· In air circulation system for room by the small fans.
· For used in security alarm
· This can be implemented on railway station to generate elec-tric power.
· In bus station.
· In car parking system.
· In Airports.
· In Lift system.
· In car lifting system.
· Electric escalators
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
In order to overcome the energy crises problem and also contribute to create a healthy global environmental change, this technique need to be widely implemented. Thus this is a promising technology to provide efficient solution to power crisis to affordable extent. This will be the most acceptable means of providing power to the places that involves difficulties of transmission. Moreover walking across power producing platform will be a fun for idle people who can improve their health byexercising in such platforms with earning. The electrical energy generated at such farms will be useful for nearby applications. This technology would facilitate the future creation of new urban landscapes, athletic fields with a spectator area, music halls, theaters, nightclubs and a large gathering space for rallies, demonstrationsand celebrations, railway stations, bus stands, subways, airports etc. like capable of harnessing human locomotion for electricity generation. Though being advantageous in several aspects, such as manufacturing, installation, aesthetics, maintenance, availability etc, this technology can only contribute to low power applications. It requires highly-efficient converter mechanism and storage devices and has a less storage lifespan. Besides, the materials used in manufacturing the devices must be highly durable, as they will be operating throughout the year. As of today, this technology is in its nascent stages due to the above stated reasons. Development in the areas of storage and transmission of energy may eliminate all the drawbacks and make this an effective technology for power harvesting.
This type of technology may be well suited to other applications though. One potential application would be to connect one of these tiles directly to a low consumptions device. A few examples of such devices are a vending machine or a parking pass dispenser. A customer would walk or drive up the machine and depress the pad. This may be able to generate enough power to run the device for the very short period of time that it is in use. It would take very little power for a vending machine to push a candy bar forward or a machine to push out a parking pass.Another potential use of pavegen tiles would be education and awareness. Being "carbon neutral" or "energy neutral" is very much in style these days. These tiles could be implemented temporarily for major sporting events, festivals, concerts or similar things. The goal here would not be to save money. Instead, the event could advertise that it is not using any electricity from the grid. These days, that is a rather cool thing for an event to brag about. This could be a very effective way to create dialog and awareness of related energy issues.
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