Friday, February 19, 2010
MIT researchers have develop an energy-harvesting systems that could replace batteries in electronic devices that need to work for long periods of time.
Biomedical monitoring systems worn by a patient, monitors for machinery or industrial installations in remote or inaccessible situations are just two such applications.
According to MIT researchers power for sensors in such applications could be provided just from differences in temperature between the body and the surrounding air, eliminating or reducing the need for a battery.
Harvesting ambient vibration energy through piezoelectric means can potentially supply 10 to100's of microWatts of available power. Existing piezoelectric harvesters are limited by their interface circuits.
MIT researchers developed a control circuit that optimizes the match between the energy output from the thermoelectric material that generates power from temperature differences and a storage capacitor.
Such a system, for example, could enable 24-hour-a-day monitoring of heart rate, blood sugar or other biomedical data, through a simple device worn on an arm or a leg and powered just by the body's temperature, which would almost always be different from the surrounding air.
By: DocMemory
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